


Unconventional instructor

by skaralding



Series: Unconventional training [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Clone Sex, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, Dubiously Consensual Drug Use, Emotional Manipulation, Genderswap, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Incest, Kage Bunshin | Shadow Clones, M/M, No Uchiha Massacre, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Pining, Rough Sex, Sibling Incest, Stalker Itachi, Stalker Sasuke, Stalking, Teacher-Student Relationship, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-07-19 03:15:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19967131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skaralding/pseuds/skaralding
Summary: Before Itachi joined the Seduction Corps, he loved his brother. After completing their full three-year course of instruction, he tried his best to love his brother from a safe—appropriate—distance.He failed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this story isn't quite as porny to start with as the one it's a companion to, at least as far as detailed scenes go, but it will get there eventually. I also want to stress that it initally focuses more on Itachi's relationships with various other people as he advances in the Corps; most ItaNaruSasu interactions begin in chapter 2.
> 
> Re the underage warning, by the time Itachi, Naruto and Sasuke start getting down, the boys are meant to be around 15 or so.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Itachi's first two years in the Seduction Corps come hand in hand with new challenges and unpleasant discoveries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited chapter on 7/27/19 for spelling and other minor crap.

Itachi’s stint in the Seduction Corps, per his file, began with the requisite three years of training—a year of intake, followed by one of apprenticeship, and then by one year of intensive field practice. His seduction missions were mostly successful; his overall record was nothing short of exemplary, aided by the fact that he had more than one surefire way to subdue targets and extract what he needed from them.

His sensei, if asked, would probably say he was a credit to the Corps, his prowess a boost to their often unsavoury reputation. Publicly, Itachi was grateful for the rigorous training, and was a quiet supporter of the Corps. Privately, he viewed his entanglement with the Corps as an unpleasantly necessary drain on his time.

He still remembered the first time the Corps became more than just one of the low-combat divisions he would likely never concern himself with. Itachi had just come back from Ame as a new-minted chunin; his head had been full to bursting of future training regimens, of weaknesses to correct, strengths to maximize. He’d only listened with half an ear when Mother called him aside one morning to talk about genetics and make a series of mortifying inquiries.

Her questions and his stilted, tentative answers formed a somewhat worrying picture. The fact that he’d never yet had so much as the inkling of a crush on anyone, and yet still felt the urge to masturbate semi-regularly only seemed to confirm her hypothesis that he was highly likely to turn out to have a higher sex drive than was typical for Uchiha.

“It could pass you by,” Mother said. “There’s always a chance that you’ll just end up continuing on as you are.” But her expression and her slightly weary tone told him that it wasn’t very likely.

Worried, but not _too_ worried, Itachi had nodded and thanked Mother for the new information, and let it settle somewhere at the back of his mind. After all, it wasn’t uncommon for strong kekkei genkai like theirs to come with annoying side effects. And, since he already had a vague inkling that people in the clan had somewhat high sex drives to begin with, he’d thought that dealing with his own if it ever got that way wouldn’t be very difficult. As the most likely clan heir, the Seduction Corps had had him pencilled in for a full course pretty much since the day he’d been born; the only thing that changed about that was the fact that it was now mandatory that he accept the training, rather than just a strongly suggested course of action.

Itachi remembered how incurious he’d been, in the years before the Corps absorbed him. He’d continued to be a late bloomer with regard to sexual attraction—something Mother assured him was normal—so he hadn’t really even started to casually scope out the discreet little building across the street from the ugly bungalow that housed records for T&I until he was seventeen and a half. And he’d only started doing that because he thought he probably should, rather than go on waiting for someone from the Corps to reach out to him first.

Then one day, Shisui dropped by after a fast-paced courier mission, sweaty and drooping and complaining in that whiny undertone that grated on Itachi like nothing else, and suddenly, it was all Itachi could do to keep from drooling. _Literally_ drooling, in a way that Shisui soon noticed, and smirked about. That smirk, combined with Shisui’s bare, tanned chest, was enough to wipe out all of Itachi’s higher level processes so thoroughly that when Shisui tugged him over to the bed and ordered him to lie down, he obeyed immediately.

“Suck me.” Fingers first, then nipples, then Shisui’s long, hard cock. Then fingers again, while rutting desperately against the increasingly damp cotton bed covers. “Come for me.”

Itachi had never forgotten how helpless he felt, trapped in his own bed, his lips parted, his cock painfully constrained by his too-tight boxer briefs. Shisui had grinned at him, and he’d come in his pants, and then gone limp, unable to look up.

“Looks like you really need training,” Shisui had said, his calloused hands ghosting over Itachi’s heaving back. “Poor thing.”

Any lingering embarrassment or hesitation about setting up an appointment with the Corps melted away as soon as Shisui began to use that exaggerated tone of sympathy. Not just because Itachi could feel himself beginning to get hard again, but because he instinctively understood that if he let on how much he was weak to this—to someone this attractive to him just _being there_ —Shisui would never let him live it down.

So, for his second time, Itachi had gone on the offensive, and though that increasingly familiar current of bone-deep satisfaction tore through him as he came, he wasn’t the first one gasping, the first one soiling the sheets.

“I take it back,” Shisui murmured, afterwards. “Any more training will just make you a demon.”

For that, Itachi bit him, sucking hickeys into his pale skin in places that wouldn’t be seen, and Itachi soon found that it wasn’t all that hard (…) to make him beg to come.

Sadly, Itachi’s Corps sensei wasn’t at all impressed when he told her about it. “Did you gain anything, then?” Shima-san asked, once Itachi had finished his low, monotone account. “Let me rephrase; how did you benefit by requiring him to beg you to let him come?”

“It… my cousin responds best to physical demonstrations of my superiority,” Itachi said. “He’ll think twice about bothering me, next time.”

“And what about if _you’re_ the one bothering him?”

“…I wouldn’t.”

“What if I required you to?”

“Then I would, sensei.”

“How would you get him to give in?”

Itachi, who had been struggling to keep back a blush for some time by then, didn’t manage to say anything. He was imagining it all too well, the way Shisui’s eyebrows would climb, the way he’d smirk. _Couldn’t get enough of me, huh?_ he’d say, and it wouldn’t be true, but just hearing him say it and feeling him step in close to Itachi would—

“Itachi-kun,” Shima-san said, her tone wry, “ _this_ is why you need training. It’s all too easy for someone your age to get distracted in these situations.”

Itachi, still blushing, managed to give her a crisp nod in response. “What do I need to do?”

Shima-sensei smirked. “Come here,” she said. “No aphrodisiacs for you yet, I think—you’re a type D Uchiha, correct? Now, I think the first thing is getting you a little desensitized to the climb…”

Itachi very quickly learned certain terms. The ‘climb’, in Corps parlance, was the moment leading up from the first sexual touch and all the way to orgasm, which was usually called the ‘peak’. The ‘trough’ was the hazy moment after orgasm, and though it was considered to be less valuable as a point of extraction, it was also a good time for elimination, or for working on the target’s feelings towards you. The ‘plot’ (as in garden plot, for reasons that were never explained) was the groundwork for everything, and ranged from carefully selected clothing to conversations with just the right amount of flirting in them.

For the first few weeks, Itachi was always, always, _always_ the target. He’d thought, to begin with, that he didn’t have much interest in women, but Shima-sensei had still ensnared him. Years later, even though he’d seen her naked enough times that he could probably draw her that way without needing to rely on his eye-assisted memories, just seeing her stretch so that her top rode up was enough to get him looking again, hoping to see more.

“They say you never forget your first,” she’d told him, once his intake year was over, and his apprenticeship to Ueno-sensei was about to begin. “I think it’s nonsense. But I won’t deny that one’s first encounter with a master of the art has some significance.” She’d stopped to reach up and pat Itachi on the cheek—growing an inch and a half taller than her had been strange—and then smiled at him in a way that left him craving one last kiss. “Serve well, Itachi-kun.”

* * *

Ueno-sensei had not been an improvement. Ueno-sensei had had a higher standing than Shima-sensei in the Corps at that time, and he’d politicked vigorously to get his hands on the Uchiha clan heir to make some sort of point. Itachi had been annoyed, but hadn’t let it show very much, half because his discomfort seemed to satisfy Ueno-san on a deep level, and half because he was trying out what it felt like to put what Shima-sensei had taught him into practice against a serious opponent.

Shima-sensei would have disapproved of his using said teachings on a fellow Corps member without sanction, but Shima-sensei didn’t have to deal with Ueno-san’s pointed leering, Ueno-san’s repeated prodding, Ueno-san’s disdain. That the man could suck cock like no one Itachi had ever known did not help. That the man would do that, would leave Itachi wrung out and shaking and then come close and whisper stupid things to him…

“A man’s mouth is better, isn’t it?” Ueno-san liked to say, and even though it was true that Itachi still responded more readily to men than women, he always made a point of regurgitating Corps wisdom in response (“to ninja with true skill, gender is irrelevant”), just to keep from giving Ueno-san the satisfaction. “You can fool other people,” Ueno-san always said, once Itachi had gotten the words out. “You can’t fool your old sensei.”

It wasn’t until an otherwise forgettable dinner party that Itachi realized what was truly driving Ueno-san’s stupidly obvious attempt at making him feel as if his orientation was something to hide. Uchiha dinner parties weren’t closed off to outsiders, but it was usually just Uchiha and their vassal clans, or major clans and _their_ vassal clans that had members show up. Itachi had been surprised enough at seeing the nominally clanless Ueno-san at the party that he’d beelined for Aunt Chihiro to see if he could get anything out of her about it, only to stop halfway around the pillar separating him from her and the other gossips.

“ _I_ don’t feel sorry for him,” Aunt Chihiro was saying, in a too-loud whisper. “You’d think he’d have accepted it by now, that he lost to Mikoto-chan, but now he’s hanging all over the heir, corrupting him—”

“You say ‘lost’ as if he was ever in the running,” Aunt Hisaka interjected, slyly. “Now, if Ueno-kun was a blond, it’d have been an entirely different story.”

“Hoho, I almost forgot,” Aunt Chihiro said. “Well _now_ I feel sorry for him. It’s not every day you see someone so cursed; if I had had to compete against the Hokage for your brother, Hisa-chan, I think—”

Itachi had gone away with his mind in a daze. The Yondaime? The Yondaime and _Father_? What was even more ridiculous about the idea, other than the fact that Father always, always, _always_ criticized the Hokage whenever there was an opportunity, was the fact that the Hokage was famously devoted to his wife, devoted to the extent that it was a village joke that the real Daimyo in Fire Country was Kushina-sama.

Then again, considering the way that more clans than Itachi had expected seemed to turn a blind eye to certain kinds of partner sharing, perhaps it wasn’t all that surprising that Father hated the Yondaime. Itachi had just come through his intake year in the Seduction Corps, after all; there was no way he could deny the strength of emotion that a rejection could produce. Father had always been both handsome and proud; that he’d been unable to catch the Yondaime’s attention even after a full three years of instruction by the Corps would have galled him.

And of course, once Itachi thought of that, it was all too easy to see what had likely become of Ueno-san’s suit in that environment. Itachi didn’t doubt for a moment that Ueno-san’s attentions would have been encouraged, up to a point. Beyond that point, he would have hit a wall. Father and Mother had never seemed to have any outside entanglements—another thing Itachi couldn’t help but think was more influence from Father’s bitterness over the Yondaime’s iron-clad disinterest—and Ueno-san was neither connected enough or powerful enough to force an exception to be made on his behalf.

All of which meant, to Itachi, that he now had a way to bring Ueno-san to heel.

* * *

After that fateful dinner, Itachi made some subtle changes in his behaviour, and whenever he practised his solid henge, he deliberately chose to use a realistically older-looking version of himself as his practice goal. Everyone said he took more after Mother, but it wasn’t anything difficult to play up his points of similarity to Father instead, save for one exception, his attitude. Itachi tried different shadings of arrogance each time, and was starting to feel a little frustrated by Ueno’s unaffected smirking by the time aphrodisiac week came round again.

Itachi hated aphrodisiacs. He could control himself on them now, after long, humiliating practice, but he still disliked them, still despised the way they made the fire in him blaze all out of proportion. So the first day of that week, he was too distracted by the habitual struggle for control to notice anything out of the ordinary about Ueno-san’s behaviour.

The second day, Ueno-san tied him down and demanded that he beg to be fucked, and it didn’t take long for Itachi to notice that Ueno was enjoying the process a little too much. After one long, slightly muddled moment of thought, Itachi set about writhing in his bonds, testing them the way he would if he were only barely in control. “Sensei,” he choked out. “Sensei, I need… I need a distraction. Please.”

For answer, Ueno-san bent in over his cock and gave it a long, tortuous lick. “What you need is to know your place.”

That day, he didn’t let Itachi come until Itachi’s aching hole was stretched wide around a massive dildo. Afterwards, he pulled the dildo out and replaced it with his own cock, murmuring incoherently about what a loose little slut Itachi was.

Itachi, nowhere near as scrambled as he’d been pretending to be, couldn’t help but savour the breakthrough. _It seems he prefers arrogance spiced with desperation_ , he thought, smugly. _I have him._

Itachi didn’t tell anyone about that discovery, or about the fact that Ueno-san seemed perfectly content to continue in a style of instruction that he believed was making his student dependent on him. For all that Ueno-san lacked in judgement and perspective, he was a fine teacher in the little cruelties and humiliations one could wreak on someone without ever quite jolting them out of their climb to the peak, and he was also unwittingly teaching Itachi how to handle the strain of a long-term assignment.

It felt, for the latter half of that year, as if Itachi were two different people. Inwardly, he evaluated his progress and relaxed; outwardly, he sought refuge in a strict, nearly too busy schedule, relying on frequent mid-ranked missions to take him beyond Ueno-san’s reach. Whenever he went to Ueno-san’s spacious two-bedroom apartment, he was unfailingly obedient, and he never said anything about the fact that some of the sessions weren’t counted as part of the official tally in his file.

During the last two months of his apprenticeship, Itachi ramped up his act. He didn’t quite break—Ueno-san would never have believed that—but he made it look like he was panicking about their upcoming separation, consumed by self-hatred for his unholy reliance on all the things his sensei could do to him. He enjoyed the challenge, just as he also enjoyed his delicate investigation of Ueno-san’s previous apprenticeships. Ueno-san’s overbearing desire for dominance and general disregard for his students’ feelings meant that only one or two of his former apprentices had anything good to say about him, so Itachi’s vague plans about humiliating the man in future gained definition and intent.

The expression on Ueno-san’s face when, at the end of the apprenticeship year, ‘Ita-chan’ didn’t bow his head at the hearing and beg for another year of guidance, was particularly satisfying.

“You,” Ueno-san breathed, “you _dared_?”

Itachi wrinkled his forehead. “Sensei, I don’t understand. I thought…” and then he widened his eyes, and flushed a little, and said: “Sensei, I thought you approved of the act I was trying. I thought you knew.”

Ueno-san had tried to pin him to the wall of the Corps council room with a wakizashi. Ueno-san had then been forced to go on leave, and Shima-sensei had given Itachi a _look_ , and had voted against his being put in a pair association for his final year. “God help whoever ends up saddled with you,” she said to him, after the vote passed despite her obvious disapproval. “Please try not to traumatize them.”

“I won’t if they don’t try anything first,” Itachi had murmured, and so Shima-sensei had rolled her eyes at him and left.

* * *

Itachi didn’t expect that, when the pair association lists were finally released, he ended up assigned to the only distant female cousin he didn’t avoid out of necessity. He could only think that Mother had been listening after all, the last time she’d sat him down for the yearly marriage talk.

Uchiha Yuri, his new pair partner, was much less enthused about their new connection than he was. “You know they’ll try to marry us, right?” was the first thing she asked, over tea (him) and coffee (her). “Isn’t that the last thing you want?”

“I wouldn’t ask anything of you besides an heir and a spare,” Itachi said, toying with the handle of his teacup. “If that’s not acceptable—”

“You’d _want_ to marry me?” Yuri said, her voice cracking a little. “But you—aren’t you set on, on, on someone?”

“Who? Ueno-san?”

“No, of course not, I mean, I just always thought that you and Shisui might…”

“Shisui prefers women,” Itachi said, after a pause for a slow, satisfying sip. He really liked this teahouse; everything always came out at just the right temperature. “And even if he didn’t, and I went about acquiring him, I think I’d strangle him after a month.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve seen someone set on an illogical choice,” was all Yuri would say, at first. And then, after a brief, not quite uncomfortable silence: “I have someone, myself. To consider marriage to you, I’d prefer you had someone as well. Just to keep things fair.”

“Then you’re in luck, Yuri-san.”

“Oh, drop it, we’re nearly the same age, and you made me cry last night. Preserving the formalities would be ridiculous.” Then, after she’d really processed what Itachi had just said, her smile fell away, and her eyes went red. “Itachi. The implication that you have someone won’t be enough.”

“Would it help if I said it isn’t so much having them, as it is wanting them?”

“You…” Yuri’s eyes widened. “You can’t—they turned you down? Someone turned _you_ down?”

Itachi’s tight smile then had been more for her sake than his own; he hadn’t wanted her to think she’d offended him. “Let’s just say they’re an almost impossible choice, and leave it at that.”

Yuri had sighed, patted his hand, and told him to ask her again about marriage in a few years. “I can’t marry _my_ idiot,” she’d said, “so there’s no rush.”

Itachi had smiled at her again, genuinely, and had wished that the latter part of the conversation had all been an act, the way Yuri’s calm smile and still-red eyes indicated she half believed it to be. _The_ Uchiha Itachi, genius at every key ninja art, had been expected to stumble somewhat when seconded to the Seduction Corps, since even geniuses had a difficult time becoming accustomed to dealing with the whiplash from emotional and sexual entanglements. And yet, he had not just sailed through his first year, he’d dominated a teacher and tarnished their public image by the end of his second year, all by using the few things his first sensei had taught him.

Midway through his first year in the Corps, Itachi had gone from only needing to ignore shy looks and painfully modest love letters from his admirers to having to occasionally throw enterprising fellow Corps members out of his dorm bed. Whenever either of his sensei gave him a new target, or demanded that he practice on someone, he’d never failed to reel his target in. That Yuri hadn’t laughed in his face at the idea that there existed more than a few people he couldn’t get—someone other than the Yondaime, some particularly closed-off veterans, and the Yondaime’s crazy wife—was already kind enough of her that it endeared her to him.

But it was true. Itachi couldn’t get—wouldn’t _allow_ himself to try and get—his brother. His stupid, clingy, jealous, hero-worshipping younger brother, who he knew he could get, could _take_ , by just reaching out his hand.

He’d never mentioned those leanings to Shima-sensei. They hadn’t even felt like they meant anything, at first. His intake year had already been such a haze of pleasure and hormones that he’d never really thought twice about the fact that looking at Sasuke’s collarbones made him horny. Looking at any boy’s collarbones did it for him at that point, the way painted toes in the standard sandals did it for him. The way watching Mother flirt with Father when she thought no one was looking did it for him.

When, a year or so later, Sasuke had come home, avoiding meeting his eye, and had hurried to shut himself away in his room, Itachi hadn’t thought anything of the surge of interest he’d felt. He’d spied on Sasuke that night out of habit, and chuckled soundlessly to himself as he watched Sasuke frowning and blushing and wriggling beneath the blankets in a tell-tale manner.

It wasn’t until the week before the end-of-apprenticeship hearing that Itachi started to worry. Sasuke rarely brought his boyfriends or girlfriends home—friends, yes, but never anyone he wanted. But he’d blushed as he introduced the equally blushing Watanabe Kazuki to Mother, and it hadn’t skipped Itachi’s attention that that had been one of the nights Father always missed dinner due to a long shift.

Itachi had been polite and teasing and full of smiles on the outside, and cold as anything on the inside. The Watanabe boy wasn’t good enough—even Mother thought so, from how gently she was treating him—but just looking at him shouldn’t have made Itachi feel like taking him aside and carving him up with one of the blunter kitchen knives. Just looking at the way Watanabe-kun kept gazing at Sasuke, kept sitting a little too closely, kept grinning nervously whenever Sasuke looked at him…

Itachi had not trusted himself to sit with them, or anywhere near them, after dinner. He’d made his excuses and gone to the Corps and made right for the room where intake trainees got tied up for multiple-use desensitization, and he’d monopolized a small, slight, dark-haired kunoichi for the better part of an hour.

He’d still been unable to stop himself from going to Sasuke’s room that night, and watching as Sasuke relieved himself beneath the blankets. The only thing that saved poor Watanabe-kun from waking up eyeless on the front steps of his parents’ modestly wealthy home was the fact that Sasuke didn’t call out anyone’s name.

Itachi, disgusted by himself, set himself toward reform. He had a viable outlet for his insane desires; there was no need to make things complicated. He could put his cock in any hole he wanted in the village, just not that one. He couldn’t stop himself from peeping on Sasuke, but he _could_ keep from touching himself while he did it, or from making the lives of Sasuke’s starry-eyed boyfriends and girlfriends difficult.

Well, he could do that last thing, if he really tried. It was a pity that they so often didn’t deserve it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Itachi reluctantly accepts the responsibility of training Naruto, only to find that his new apprentice is prone to playing devious pranks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More actual sex scenes now (both m/m and f/m), as well as more of Itachi pining. Also, if you've read the previous story in this series (which you totally have, right??), you'll notice how skewed Sasuke's POV was when it comes to certain things. Itachi has this problem as well, of course, though on a smaller scale.

Itachi’s third year in the Corps went by in a jealous, utterly unproductive haze. Somehow, he continued to function, and slowly, as months, and then years, went by without a change in his noxious desires, he got used to them. He got used to compensating, used to holding back, used to working around the constant, low-level need to put his hands on Sasuke’s increasingly tanned skin.

Sasuke hadn’t followed in his footsteps. He’d graduated on time, with his peer group. He had friends of his own age, though of course he called them ‘idiots’ and ‘losers’ and so forth, and though he never managed to keep a girlfriend or boyfriend around for long, he seemed to have the basics of the age-appropriate part of that kind of interaction down.

And Itachi, by accepting the responsibility of guiding Namikaze Naruto through his intake year in the Seduction Corps, was coming very, very close to shattering that veil of normalcy. Because he knew Naruto, knew of the two boys’ weird, enduring rivalry, and he knew something would be permanently skewed once Sasuke learned he was training Naruto in such an intimate way.

To be fair, Naruto’s apprenticeship wasn’t a responsibility Itachi could have turned down without all sorts of annoying repercussions. Father had been both proud and seething, sitting there and barely drinking his tea as Shima-sensei put the option on the table. Father, who had put as much distance as was possible between his day-to-day life and the three years he’d spent in the Corps, had only been offered the responsibility of training the Hokage’s son as a courtesy; he’d passed on it, but Itachi had seen the way his fingers tightened around the rim of the teacup when he did.

If Itachi had passed on it as well, the gods only knew how that would have provoked his father. So, even though he knew very well the kind of reaction Sasuke would have to seeing Naruto hanging around him and calling him sensei—even though he knew just what he would be _doing_ to a boy Sasuke’s age—he’d bowed his head to Shima-sensei and professed himself honoured to take the boy on.

“You understand, of course, that due to his identity, if the two of you pass your three-month evaluation, you will be honour-bound to continue teaching him for the full term of his commitment?”

Itachi only hesitated a moment before answering Shima-sensei’s blunt question with a nod. He didn’t even have to look at Father to know that some of the rage Father had been hiding had eased; he could feel it. Stupid as Itachi thought it was ( _he_ didn’t think anything would ever soothe what he would feel if Sasuke ever turned him down the way the Hokage must have done to Father), he didn’t show it.

He listened closely to Shima-sensei, from the moment she began the ritual goodbyes, to the moment he finished escorting her to the creaky front gate of her house. “Be careful with him,” she said, finally. And then added, just as he was nodding: “Be careful with yourself.”

Then, when Itachi glanced down at her, wondering just what she’d seen in his careful mask that would make her say that, Shima-sensei let out a short, harsh sigh. “Sensei?”

For answer, she reached out and took hold of his shoulder. “His age,” she said, her sharp grey eyes fixed on his face. “It bothers you.”

“Yes, but I don’t see how the usual solution,” i.e., easing the trainee into the swing of things by interspersing Corps training with purely physical, non-sexual skill improvement, “won’t work to ease things.” Naruto, at a year older than the Corps’ minimum age of fourteen, would be slated to finish his intake year by the time he could start trying for chunin and therefore encountering foreign nin. It was perfect timing for him, if not for Itachi, so there was nothing to do but accept it. “I’ll cope somehow, sensei.”

From the way Shima-sensei was still staring up at him, he knew she wasn’t letting go, wasn’t going to let him fob her off with the expected answer. “Why does his age bother you?”

For one long, ugly moment, it felt physically impossible to open his mouth. Itachi felt that if he did, the truth would tear out of him, would _shame him_ in front of one of the women he respected most in the world. When he finally did say something, it was only almost the truth, and it still hurt to let the words out. “There’s someone his age, that I… want.”

Shima-sensei’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “And?” Her tone was half impatient, half relieved. “Do you feel you’ll fail the Namikaze boy, because of that?”

“No.” This, at least, Itachi was sure of. “I would never.”

“Take care with him, and with yourself, then,” she said, emphatically. “It’ll all work out. If you’ve any concerns, if you run into issues with the boy, or, if you feel, afterwards, that you can talk to me about the—about your person, the one you want…”

Itachi wanted to say he would, but he couldn’t, so he just stood there while Shima-sensei looked him up and down and let out a short, gusty sigh.

“Young people,” she muttered. “I almost wish I’d recommended someone else.” Then, as Itachi shrank back a little, she shook her head again and gave him a brief, sly smile. “Try not to let the experience go to your head _too_ much.”

* * *

Itachi quickly found out what Shima-sensei had meant by that last line. He didn’t know whose fault it was, that Naruto-kun—he couldn’t bring himself to be any more formal than that with the boy after the first two sessions—seemed to worship the ground he walked on. Sasuke had always been more than a little starry-eyed and clingy, but somehow, the sensation Itachi got when it was Naruto staring up at him like that wasn’t at all the same.

Perhaps it was because he knew, just as well as Naruto-kun did, that sparring wasn’t the closest they would get to each other. Naruto was, to put it bluntly, a horny little slut, and he seemed both ridiculously pleased with his new sensei (“I thought they’d make me train with the pervy sage, y’know”) and with the details of what said sensei would be teaching him.

If Itachi had been the kind of person to rush things, he’d have skipped right past the acclimation period needed for younger trainees and ordered Naruto out of his clothes two minutes into their second session. Instead, though, Itachi went on testing Naruto’s speed, his stamina, his reflexes and his tactics, as well as every other thing that could be improved during the period of his apprenticeship. In between the tests and the choppy spars, Itachi didn’t forget to touch the boy, to test his reactions there too, to see if there were any phobias or traumas they needed to work past.

Naruto, unsurprisingly, as typical for boys in his age group, was skittish, easily embarrassed by Itachi’s brief, suggestive touches. As session after session went by, it also became clear that he was probably a little more sensitive than was typical, as well as nursing something of an oral fixation. He licked his lips a lot when he was feeling nervous round Itachi. And he always had an uncanny sense for when they were being watched by Sasuke, which was nearly every other session since Itachi hadn’t yet mastered the arcane favour-trading system necessary to book any of the tightly sealed teaching rooms in the Corps’ main building, and thus made do with clan training rooms instead.

“Sensei,” Naruto whined, one slightly stuffy afternoon, “he’s here _again_.”

“Drink your aphrodisiac,” Itachi said, without looking at him. Very few trainees liked the acculturation sessions, whether they were the kind of light, control-building sessions common in the intake year, or the more intense, full-spectrum sessions more common in the apprentice year. “Naruto.”

“Yeah, fine, I’m drinking it,” Naruto muttered, but this time, instead of grimacing and whining some more as he drank up, he paused in between each sip, smacking his lips.

“What are you doing?” Itachi asked, even though he could see how carefully Naruto had positioned himself so that he’d be visible from the east-facing window of their indoor training room. “Well?”

“I’m giving him a—whoa!” Naruto fumbled to catch the empty cup he’d nearly dropped, then set it on the floor near the training mats, then flushed as Itachi looked at him. “I’m, uh, I thought I’d give him a show, sensei. Shock him a little, ’ttebayo.”

“Oh,” Itachi said, caught between amusement and anger, amusement that Naruto was so _very_ predictable, and anger that Naruto dared to try and use him to bother his brother. “I suppose you want to get me reported, then?”

“What? No!”

“Surely you know that’s what he’d do,” Itachi lied, because he knew Sasuke would come to him first, if he was that worried that Itachi might be doing something wrong. “Surely you know how embarrassing it would be, if you had to stand up and explain to him and the Hokage that you were meant to be doing this, meant to be on your knees and getting fucked.”

Naruto was a nice, ripe red, now, and he didn’t resist as Itachi stepped forward, blocking the view of him from the eastern window. His breath hitched when Itachi reached down and unbuttoned his pants. “S-sensei—”

“Don’t worry,” Itachi said, as he took out Naruto’s already hard cock. “I’m not going to fuck you in front of him. But I think he should see you like this, at least. See all of you.”

“Sensei—”

“If you cover yourself in a moment,” Itachi said, his fingers pinching the spongy, slippery tip of Naruto’s cock, “I’m going to make sure you regret it. Understood?”

Naruto gulped. “Understood, sensei.”

Itachi didn’t think too hard about what he was doing for those next few moments. It gave him an electric thrill to step aside, just for a minute, just long enough that anyone watching them through the east-facing window would get a good glimpse of Naruto’s stiff cock. It wasn’t _precisely_ Corps protocol, skipping ahead to mixing verbal intimidation with sexual touch so quickly, but he told himself Naruto deserved it.

And because Naruto was looking up at him like that, he told himself, too, that skipping ahead just a little more wouldn’t hurt. Naruto yelped when Itachi took proper hold of him. He groaned, thrusting into Itachi’s warm, sure grip, and there was a delightful hitch in his breath as he worked his cock back and forth.

When Itachi tightened his grip on Naruto’s cock, he felt the boy shiver against him. When he loosened his grip, Naruto let out a brief, pleading whimper, thrusting forward in a bid to get more stimulation. It was all too easy to imagine Sasuke like this, Sasuke’s hands gripping his shirt, Sasuke’s head falling helplessly against his shoulder.

“Sensei,” Naruto whispered, shame and eagerness clear in his unsteady tone. “Sensei, I’m…”

“Good,” Itachi said, unable to look away from him. _Sasuke wouldn’t get so red,_ he thought, and then forced himself to focus on what was in front of him. It helped that Naruto was getting a little teary, and wouldn’t meet his eye; there was nothing quite as absorbing as watching someone being overwhelmed by their desires. “Let it out for me, okay?”

Naruto made a choked sound, then shivered. Itachi sped up his strokes, and couldn’t help but feel a surge of smug satisfaction when Naruto finally jerked against him, spilling all over his hand in a silent, desperate rush.

* * *

The next time it happened, it was once again Naruto’s fault, Naruto who begged to follow Itachi home that evening because he knew Sasuke had just come back from a mission, and he wanted to put on another show. Itachi had strongly suggested that Naruto find something more constructive to do with his time, yet still caught him wriggling through one of the slightly less dangerously trapped windows on the second floor, and somehow, it ended up just the way Naruto wanted, with Naruto on his knees between Itachi’s lazily spread thighs.

Fuck, but the boy already had a sweet mouth. Nowhere near Ueno-san’s level as yet, but still making up for it with loud, sloppy eagerness, and with hungry little moans. “Are you sure you wanted to put on a show?” Itachi couldn’t help but ask. “Are you sure you didn’t just want sensei’s cock in your mouth?”

“Mmrgh,” Naruto said, blushing guiltily, and Itachi couldn’t help but smile.

There was a shift in Sasuke’s chakra, moving restlessly downstairs. When Itachi felt Sasuke starting to come up the stairs, he reached out with a chakra string and turned off his main bedroom light.

“Sensei, you can’t,” Naruto said, having immediately pulled back. “I can’t see what I’m doing.” His breath was hot against the damp skin of Itachi’s cock, and the panic in his tone was only partly genuine. “Sensei, it—mmph!”

Itachi had never been so hard in his life. The chakra string nudged the door open just the right amount, just enough that Sasuke would be able to see without thinking himself seen. Naruto slurped eagerly around his cock, not complaining when Itachi adjusted his sitting position one more time.

And then Sasuke’s silent steps brought his chakra closer. “This time,” Itachi said, his voice scratchy with lust, “why don’t you try your best to take it all in?”

It was an effort not to look at his partly open door. It killed Itachi not to do it, killed him to keep his eyes inactive. He wanted the look on Sasuke’s face, wanted to see it even if it was purely full of disgust, wanted to see Sasuke seeing him, seeing him force a boy Sasuke’s age to swallow down every inch of his cock.

At least Naruto very clearly got off on being watched like that too. He was louder than usual, and got even more enthusiastic when Itachi couldn’t hold back a few, brief moans, and he swallowed every single drop of Itachi’s load with gusto. Afterwards, he rubbed his cheek against the inside of Itachi’s still-clothed thighs, and looked startled to be dragged up fully onto Itachi’s messy bed and swallowed down in turn.

By then, Itachi’s door was closed again, and the privacy seal was up, trapping each one of Naruto’s choked squeals as Itachi plundered him. But Itachi could not help but imagine being overheard by Sasuke, imagine the burning jealousy he liked to dream that his brother would feel when he heard Naruto crying out as he came.

* * *

The third time was… utterly inadvisable. Naruto came to him with a script. It was only three pages, but it was still definitely _a script_.

“You know,” Itachi couldn’t help but say, even after he’d taken the stupid thing into his restless hands, “you could just ask him out, if you want him this much.” Which was what he assumed was going on here, even though it made his stomach twist to think of Sasuke pursued by Naruto. “Doing things this way serves no purpose.”

“It’ll teach him not to be so annoying,” Naruto muttered. “Don’t give me that look, sensei, you have no idea how mean he can be. He’s on his best behaviour around _you_ , but with people like me…” Naruto paused, letting out a short, frustrated sigh. “Anyway, sensei, you wanted me to try a planned scenario, right? Doesn’t this count?”

Somehow, looking down into Naruto’s blue, too-earnest gaze, Itachi couldn’t help but feel a thin pang of sympathy on Ueno-san’s behalf. Itachi knew Naruto was playing him. He could see how eager Naruto was, beneath the cover of his nervous fidgeting. That innocent, entreating expression popping up on Naruto’s face never meant anything good for anyone.

Still, Itachi began to read through the script. He refused to think about why. He refused even more to think about whether Naruto had somehow managed to guess why Itachi would ever stoop to helping him put on this kind of farce.

He only allowed himself to think one thing: that Sasuke deserved someone crafty enough to scheme for him. That it mightn’t feel so bad to let Sasuke go if the one he ended up with was someone Itachi was painstakingly shaping. At the very least, he’d be able to rest assured that Sasuke would be thoroughly satisfied, sexually.

The plan, ridiculous as it was, went very well. Naruto’s assignment had been to humiliate himself as prettily as possible and entice his target to take part in it, and fuck but he nailed it, though it turned out to happen a little bit ahead of schedule due to the fact that Sasuke seemed to know how to find and manipulate another man’s prostate.

Itachi very very carefully did not think about that unwelcome little fact until it was hours later, and he was down in the multiple-use room, and Naruto was hiccuping and sobbing under the force of his thrusts. “You knew you had to pay for my help, didn’t you?” he breathed. “Didn’t you?”

“Y-yes sensei,” Naruto said, when Itachi paused to let him. “Please—it itches—”

“You deserve it,” Itachi said, sliding his hand down Naruto’s bare, sweating chest, lower and lower and lower, making him wait, making him sob again and writhe and squeeze down around the hard cock filling him up. “You know you deserve it.”

“Yes, sensei, so please—!”

“Alright,” Itachi murmured, pinching the base of Naruto’s sealed, swollen cock. “I’ll give it to you.”

Afterwards, once he was done, he withdrew and cleaned himself and sat down by Naruto’s rack, feeling something that wasn’t quite satisfaction as one of the half-masked, older ANBU approached. The man wasn’t quite as big as Itachi was, but he was far more rough, which Naruto seemed to loudly appreciate.

Naruto was very popular in the multiple-use room. Itachi didn’t set him up for it very often as a result, and never bothered to put him on the schedule for it either, because of the line that had formed the first and only time he’d done so. Naruto had loved the attention, if not the resulting aches, but the way certain people had grumbled afterwards about not having had their chance with the Yondaime’s son had soured Itachi on the idea of making it a regular thing.

Even he hadn’t been this popular, back in his day. Probably because the village didn’t lack for slim, attractive Uchiha fuck-toys even with the Corps’ less-than-savoury reputation, and also because Itachi had never been quite as loud, responsive and enthusiastic as Naruto always was. And then there was the fact that Naruto looked like a really quite lovely mix of his father and his mother, two people that had had only the light course in the Seduction Corps at best, and hadn’t done much in the way of practice in and around the village in that vein afterwards.

“Fuck me,” Naruto was moaning, as yet another ANBU Itachi vaguely recognized continued driving into him with meaty, punishing smacks. “Ngh—yes—fu-uhck—ah!”

 _Maybe it’s simpler than all those things,_ Itachi couldn’t help but think, watching the eager way Naruto rocked back into those thrusts. _Maybe it’s just that everyone loves a slut, even though they hate to admit it._

* * *

Two weeks later, Itachi stormed down into the multiple-use room, too wired to really take in anything around him. Once a rack was free, and it looked like no one was waiting to strap into it, he immediately walked up and staked claim.

“Ah?” the low, familiar voice of Mitarashi-san said, from his left. “Bad mood, Weasel-kun?”

“Yes,” Itachi managed to get out, even though he knew he probably shouldn’t respond to that old codename, especially not while the room was half regular trainees and teachers, and half the slightly more driven, more purposeful ANBU versions of both. “Not a good day.”

He’d known what he was doing, giving Naruto express permission to fuck his brother. He’d known what he might see if he dropped in on Naruto one of these days. He’d thought it would be good for him, would be an unpleasant, but bracing shock. Something painful to watch, but bearable. He’d carefully imagined it, expected to burn with jealousy as he saw Sasuke, _his_ Sasuke spread-legged and whining and begging for someone else’s cock, but he’d thought he could at least manage to stand ten minutes of that before he had to walk away.

Instead, it hadn’t been more than a minute and a half before he’d had to leave. Naruto, tunnel-visioned as he sometimes was during the act, hadn’t noticed his sensei’s presence. He and Sasuke had gone from writhing together on the bed to Sasuke pinned on the bottom, Sasuke moaning as Naruto reared up and forced his short, thick cock into Sasuke’s open mouth. Then Naruto had shifted, repositioning his foot, stroking it deliberately against Sasuke’s cock, and all Itachi could feel was a kind of murderous, bottomless rage.

 _The little bastard stole my move,_ he’d found himself thinking. He’d never forgotten the second time he’d acted for Sasuke to see, and even though it wasn’t as if there was anything special about easing your partner’s agitation that way while they gave you oral sex, Itachi had still felt—felt—

“Ooookay,” Mitarashi-san said, and Itachi flinched, because when the fuck had she got on top of him? “Ssh, don’t worry, I’ll just keep you company for a bit, okay? Just until Hound gets here.”

“He…” Itachi didn’t like the way his voice cracked. “He’ll be here?”

“Yeah, definitely,” Mitarashi-san said, and even though Itachi didn’t quite believe her, he let the sound of her voice soothe him anyway. When she guided him into her tight, wet cunt, he didn’t hesitate, he drove in just right, just the way she liked it. “Fuck, you’re still so smooth with it. Mmm…”

Like that, Itachi could stop thinking. Mitarashi-san came sooner than he’d expected, squirting all over him, and it was dirty and wet and deeply satisfying, and he wanted more, so he nodded when she whispered something about sharing him with a friend, and he was soon deep in another slick, fluttering cunt, that of someone that whined and struggled but wanted it anyway, wanted and feared it so much that Mitarashi had to hold them down to make them take it.

There were two more women, and then one man, and then Hound was there, his voice soothing, his hands deliciously cruel. Hound wasn’t a regular in the room, and had never ever been in the racks that Itachi knew of, but he had this little trick with lightning-natured chakra that came in handy when training for overstimulation, and it was just what Itachi needed tonight.

Hound rarely went as far as filling him with anything but a finger—he liked to brag that he didn’t even need to do that, didn’t need to touch anything other than someone’s skin to drive them crazy—but tonight, when Itachi begged, Hound sighed and gave in, reluctantly.

Hound had an average-sized cock, but that made his roughness even better. His fingers dug into the skin of Itachi’s hips. Lightning danced between them, sweet, fiery shocks ripping their way through Itachi’s already sensitized nerves. Itachi groaned—the only sound he allowed himself, in here—and he thought of the first time Hound had fucked him, the first time Hound had done more than pinch his nipples and shock him while someone else filled his ass.

It had been Itachi’s intake year, and his fifth time in the room, and he’d been so nervous and horny that he’d barely been able to keep still. He hadn’t been used to the weird atmosphere the room took on when it was mostly ANBU in there to help themselves to the trainees. He’d felt like some kind of victim, spread-eagled and blinded so the ANBU could safely shed their masks, and he hadn’t known why he liked it until halfway through, until he was thinking of how delicious it would be to treat someone the way they were treating him. To _use_ them.

“Please,” he begged now, much the same way he’d done then, and Hound growled in pleasure, grinding deep into him. The clawing surge of the jutsu came next, whiting out Itachi’s brain, sending him into soundless, helpless convulsions as he came yet again. “Thank you.”

“What are you thanking me for?” Hound said, his monotone voice lazy, low, and wicked. “I’m not done.”

Itachi was limp and shaking and not quite able to walk properly by the time Hound was truly done with him, but the tearing desire in him had smoothed out a little, and with it, his unreasonable anger. _I can do this,_ he told himself, as he hobbled towards the door that led to the showers. _I can still handle this. I won’t slip up. I won’t hurt my brother._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three guesses as to what happens next update >.>


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I can still handle this_ , Itachi told himself. _I won’t slip up. I won’t hurt my brother._
> 
> Two weeks later, he went back on his word.

Two weeks later, Itachi went back on his word.

He wanted to say it hadn’t been his fault, wanted somewhere to lay the blame, wanted someone else to shoulder the responsibility so he didn’t have to feel like such a disgusting, greedy, selfish pervert, but there was no one else available to point fingers at. No one other than him and Sasuke, and he knew he couldn’t bear to blame Sasuke for anything.

Ideally, Itachi would have resisted his brother’s watery gaze, his brother’s half-angry, half-pleading confession. But in that moment, in that situation, nothing about Itachi was ideal, and so instead of mounting a careful, respectful resistance, instead of committing to a period of mutual self-reflection, instead of making any kind of mature, well-thought-out response to the new, terrifying knowledge that Sasuke wanted him sexually, Itachi went just a little bit insane.

He raped—he didn’t, but it felt like he had, felt too much like it. He pushed Sasuke. He tormented him. Dominated him, and breathed raggedly as Sasuke moaned and took it, like the horny little boy he still was, and at the end of it all, Itachi pinned Sasuke down and refused to let him sleep elsewhere.

Itachi’s plan for the future was simple. _I’ll keep him with me tonight,_ he’d thought. _That way, I can fuck him tomorrow morning._

* * *

The ploy to fuck Sasuke the next morning worked. It and various other ploys kept on working. Generally, Sasuke didn’t so much try to resist as he wriggled temptingly in Itachi’s grip and gave in whenever his cock or his greedy little hole was touched. For example, on that first, glorious morning, Sasuke had whispered that his ass was too tender for more fucking, and he’d looked on, wide-eyed and trembling with need, as Itachi fingered him instead, using tricks and cruel skill to make him come regardless of whether he said he wanted it or not.

_Do you like it?_ Every time Itachi asked his brother that, he felt he was giving himself away, giving the madness in him away. Sasuke didn’t seem to understand why he was punished when he lied. When he gave Itachi the wrong answer. _I like it,_ he always ended up saying, sometimes whispering, sometimes almost whining.

To make up for that high-handed treatment, Itachi set himself some thin, but distinct boundaries. If, at any time, Sasuke cried, Itachi had to stop and pay attention, to make very sure Sasuke was only crying out of pleasure. If, at any time, Sasuke ever seriously raised the subject of stopping what they were doing, Itachi would nod and agree to whatever his brother had decided, and he would _do it_ , he would let Sasuke go even if it made him (even more) crazy.

He planned for the worst. Marriage to Yuri was all but certain now, since he’d been unable to keep from confessing the less damning parts of his sordid situation to her. It was just a question of picking a date and setting up the ceremony. Once his relationship with Sasuke withered, Itachi would tie the knot, wait two months, and then take a long term out-village mission, something intense but with a fixed routine. Border patrol, medium-term infiltration, or perhaps diplomacy. He wouldn’t go back to ANBU—he’d quit the division at around sixteen because he was half bored, half about to go out of his mind from dealing with the regular bloodshed. But he had options, and he would put them to use.

He would do his best to make the end of their forbidden relationship a clean, simple break, even if it was only so from Sasuke’s point of view. Itachi didn’t deserve not to hurt, not after all he’d done, not after using his only brother like a cheap whore day in and day out, fucking him every night he could manage.

As for what Sasuke would do when the thing between them finally fizzled out, Itachi couldn’t bring himself to think about it too closely. He was hoping he’d be able to ignore it as much as possible, by the simple expedient of not being there to see it.

* * *

In the end, years after Itachi’s last day of formal instruction at the Corps, he didn’t know at all how to feel when Sasuke— _Sasuke_ —was the one to propose to him.

It was not a normal proposal. It was the two of them tangled in Naruto’s oversized bed, some hours after Naruto fled for a mission debriefing he had made himself late for. Sasuke was so delicious like this, his long, lean body bruised and sticky with Itachi’s come, that when he asked the question, Itachi merely grunted in response, his hands sliding up and down Sasuke’s bare, sweaty chest, his mind absorbed in the satisfaction of having Sasuke at his mercy.

“Niisan,” Sasuke ground out, “you’re not _listening_ to me.”

For answer, or perhaps for confirmation, Itachi pinched his brother’s nipples, glorying in the not-quite-gasp that that always elicited. “You want niisan to listen?”

Sasuke turned in his arms, glaring at him already, but he didn’t avoid it when Itachi leaned in for a slow, wet kiss. “Mmph—I, I think—”

“Hmm?”

“Nngh, I, we, we should marry.”

Inwardly, every bit of Itachi went on red alert. Outwardly, he continued to stroke his hands up and down his brother’s sides, and to fondle his brother’s softened, twitching cock. “Oh?”

“Sakura,” Sasuke panted, and it was only Itachi’s ironclad knowledge that Haruno had negative interest in fucking his brother that guaranteed her continued good health, “Sakura already kn-knows. She wants—if she marries me, and, and you and Yuri-senpai do too, she can have Ino, and we, we could still—”

“We?”

“You and me, niisan,” Sasuke stammered, flushing. “Like that, we could always…”

Suddenly the thought of hearing Haruno’s name on his brother’s lips one more time didn’t feel as bad. “You’ve given this a lot of thought, haven’t you?”

“It was you! It was _your_ idea, I just—hngh—”

It _was_ Itachi’s idea, his carefully casual suggestion, something he’d mentioned years ago, half as a joke, half as a desperate ploy to comfort a panicking Sasuke about their future as a forbidden, secretive couple. He’d always thought it was something of a pipe dream to hope that they’d continue to be together. He’d thought it wouldn’t last more than a year or two. Then, when it did, he’d thought things would end after one or both of them submitted to their required marriages. Now, though…

“No,” Sasuke moaned. “Niisan, you can’t. I’m sore, I’m really…” But Itachi knew what his brother sounded like when he was really too sore to continue. This, this was just Sasuke’s way of playing coy, covering up his need for more stimulation. For one long moment, Itachi wondered what it would have felt like to be Sasuke’s Seduction Corps-appointed sensei. According to Corps regulation, the very first thing Itachi would have had to do was set about the glorious task of breaking Sasuke’s inborn desire to deny what he needed. “Niisan, _no_!”

It was a good thing that the spare heir was never required to do even the superficial one-year course at the Corps. There was no sweeter feeling than holding Sasuke’s thighs apart and knowing that only a handful of people would ever have the chance to see his brother like this. That, if Itachi ever so desired, he could lay down the law and forbid Sasuke from ever taking in another man’s cock, and Sasuke would obey even though it would only make him suffer.

Probably, if Itachi ever demanded anything like that, Sasuke would flush and scowl and mutter something about how he wasn’t the kind of pervert that needed it from more than one person. Thinking of that, Itachi couldn’t help but smile; there was nothing quite so fascinating as watching Sasuke struggle to deny his slutty nature.

Even now, Sasuke was doing it. He clamped down on the invading fingers, his cock swelling visibly as he begged Itachi to stop. “Niisan,” he sobbed, “I can’t…”

“I know you can.” When Sasuke writhed, struggling to close his thighs, Itachi tightened his grip, plunging his fingers even deeper. “You know you’ll regret it if you don’t come for me. I’ll make you regret it.”

Feeling Sasuke’s slick hole tighten down around his fingers was the usual torment. It was always difficult to wait, to restrain the vicious hunger lit in him by Sasuke’s weakening struggles, Sasuke’s helpless, teary glare. Sometimes, Itachi could be patient, but tonight…

“Ah!” Sasuke’s voice cracked as he cried out, his needy hole spasming around the blunt head of Itachi’s cock. He’d already been fucked tonight, stretched and filled by Itachi and Naruto one after the other, so there was no need to be gentle with him, no need to spare him at all. “D-don’t—ungh—hngh…”

It was so easy to stimulate him like this. His head lolled back onto the pillow, and his revived erection slapped against his belly from the force of Itachi’s merciless thrusts. “N-niisan, it’s—”

“You don’t like it?”

Sasuke gulped. If it had been earlier in the night, he’d have glared up at Itachi, his gaze both pleading and resentful. _Why do you always make me say it?_ he’d said, once. _Can’t you **see** how much I need it?_ Right now, though, Sasuke seemed to have no energy to say anything at all; his cock was leaking onto his belly, and he was trembling the way he often did before he came from being fucked. “I…”

“You’ll marry for me?” Itachi hadn’t meant to say that, but once the words were out, he couldn’t take them back. “Say it.”

“Niisan, I’ll—for you, I’ll—” Sasuke’s voice was too choked to be fully intelligible. He was right on the edge, so tight that it hurt a little to keep fucking into him. “Anything, I’ll—ugh—please—”

“That’s good,” Itachi rasped. “That’s my little… my otouto. My slut.” Sasuke didn’t come until he’d said that last, filthy word, and watching it happen—feeling it—Itachi couldn’t help but thank the gods. There was nothing like the way Sasuke twisted under him. There was nothing better than filling him up. “I’m going to come. You want it, right?”

Sasuke bit his lip, refusing to say anything more, ashamed, perhaps, by the desperate pleading he’d just let slip. Then, just like Itachi expected—wanted, _needed_ —Sasuke trembled beneath him, spreading his thighs a little wider, and Itachi could no longer hold back. He could only manage one more hard, breathless thrust before pouring everything into Sasuke’s tight, slick hole.

Sasuke whimpered, twitching around him. Still breathless, Itachi couldn’t help but reach down to give his brother’s ass a squeeze. “More?”

“Get out of me,” Sasuke snarled, only to moan under his breath when Itachi actually began to pull out. “Not—ngh—can’t you be slower?”

“Bear with it a bit,” Itachi murmured. “If I do it slower, if I stay in you too long, you know you’ll only make me hard again.” Which was a lie—chakra could make Itachi as hard or as soft as he wanted at any time—but was so satisfying to say when the result was a narrow-eyed look from Sasuke, but no further protests as he withdrew. In the end, it was all worth it, all worth it to pull out and watch the trickle of come running out of Sasuke’s reddened, gaping hole. “Do you need niisan to clean you up?”

“Won’t you do it even if I don’t ask?” Sasuke snapped, only to fall silent with a shiver when Itachi began to wipe him clean. His spread thighs tensed in Itachi’s grip only once; as always, he relaxed more and more with each careful, gentle swipe of the cloth against his groin. “Niisan…”

“Hm?”

Sasuke turned his blushing face pointedly away, even as he bit his bottom lip, and Itachi couldn’t help but smile. Currently, unless Sasuke had a cock in him, and was being properly pressured to admit things, this wordless demand was as much as he would do to beg to click clean something that had been in his ass. “Open your mouth,” Itachi murmured. “Open it right now.”

“No—nhng—”

Itachi had always wondered if he’d ever be able to make his brother ask for something he was so clearly ashamed of without needing to touch him. Now, he couldn’t help but glory in the thought that he might always have another chance to experiment. That Sasuke would always give him another chance.

* * *

The weddings—Sasuke’s fussy wedding to Sakura, and Itachi’s long, stiffly traditional one to Yuri—both went off without a hitch. Itachi, half because of the stress, and half because of the extra eyes on them, limited his visits to his brother.

Things with Yuri kept on going well enough that it couldn’t help but worry him just a little bit. It wasn’t that Itachi was one of those crusty old men that liked to mutter about how unreasonable women could be, it was just that he wasn’t looking forward to the point where Yuri’s too-calm, too-reliable mask eventually broke down.

She knew about Sasuke. She’d figured out that he was the slightly-too-young person Itachi was seeing without having to even be told, two weeks before their wedding date, just based off of seeing Itachi give Sasuke a piggy back ride home from a bar. Well, that and her asking Itachi out of the blue, while he was busy setting Sasuke in bed, and Itachi freezing stupidly for a moment.

Yuri had staggered over to the empty kitchen in his halfway-packed apartment and laughed hysterically for what felt like half an hour. She’d come out eventually, to tell him that she disapproved _and_ approved, admired the guts it took to carry it off under the nose of their whole, mostly oblivious clan, and would never tell on him to the elders because it would give them all heart attacks, and none of them deserved such a swift end.

Itachi had decided to start paying a little more attention to clan meetings and clan politics after that. Yuri had yet to fess up who it was she was keeping on the side, but Itachi had an inkling that it was someone the clan could reach, and thus someone the clan could cause to suffer.

This not at all selfless choice made him much more busy than he would have liked, busy to the point that he couldn’t even have Sasuke once a week. By the time their weddings and their honeymoons were over, it had been something like a month and a half since the last time he’d had Sasuke, and he was starting to feel a little on edge.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, go find your brother,” Yuri said, one stuffy summer evening, after a near-silent dinner. “Drinking with him tonight won’t hurt anything.”

“But the schedule—”

“I’ll still be fertile tomorrow, you buffoon,” Yuri interjected. “Get out of here.”

Suppressing his flush with chakra was second nature by now. Kissing his faintly smirking wife goodnight was starting to feel like the pleasant, well-worn habit Itachi wanted it to be. ( _“We won’t be a model couple, obviously. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be seen to respect and care for each other.”_ ) The trip to the house Sasuke had bought a year ago, pointedly well away from the sprawl of clan-owned residences and businesses, went by in what felt like two or three breaths, even though Itachi was quite sure he was strolling along at a normal pace.

Well, his shadow clone was strolling. He was following along on the rooftops, hidden, burning within, picking over the every minute from the last time he’d been with Sasuke. Nothing had happened out of the ordinary, but he analysed each moment anyway, just in case he’d missed something.

_I’ve changed my mind,_ Sasuke had said, just after Itachi had come in through the window. _I don’t want to get married anymore. Niisan, she’ll **bankrupt** me._ As it turned out, Ino had insisted on paying for most of the little extravagances that Sakura had demanded, and had even managed to bully her clan into financing the flowers and decorations on top of every other little trinket she bought for Sakura.

“Oh? So late?” that was Sakura greeting his clone, her voice no less clear despite the distance between him and her. “You came just in time, I was just about to run something over to Ino’s. How’s Yuri-san doing?”

Itachi didn’t know why he was hiding on the pleasantly broad windowsill of the master bedroom rather than going in. He just kept perching there, listening to Sakura’s cheerful small talk. Listening to her knowing giggles and her reciprocal teasing of him for also having been inseparable with his new partner after his marriage.

He didn’t know why just the sound of her laughter was enough to upset him. Sasuke had been the one to ask him, while blushing furiously, if it was alright that he was planning on having children with Sakura. Itachi had been the one to tease him all night, quizzing him on what he knew about sex with women, giving him all kinds of conflicting, filthy instructions on what he should do to ensure that he got his new wife pregnant. Sasuke had muttered that he and Sakura weren’t _like that_ , and that she was a medic-nin, she could probably get pregnant by him on her own without his even being properly awake during the process.

_Oh?_ Itachi had said, unable to help himself. _Is that something you want to try, being done while you sleep?_

“Make yourself at home, okay?” Sakura was saying now. “I’m off.” And then she was strolling away while the front door opened and shut behind his clone, and Itachi could no longer delay another moment.

The master bedroom window opened smoothly. Disarming the spike trap that tried to trigger on the last third of the window track was second nature by now, as was the careful, soundless landing inside the bedroom, on the only trap-free square of the somewhat scuffed hardwood floor. Sasuke was downstairs, and his tranquil signature seemed to indicate that he was sleeping.

The signature began to move, but still didn’t stir. Probably, Itachi’s clone was carrying Sasuke, bringing him up here, bringing him to Itachi as slowly as it could manage.

Itachi’s shadow clones (he could comfortably manage two, and could squeeze out a third if it was absolutely necessary) weren’t often let anywhere near his brother, half because he always wanted to be the one closest to Sasuke, and half because his clones’ reasoning in sexual situations was often blatantly suspect. It was as if the part of him that prided itself on control and moderation in action just failed to be transferred over along with everything else.

Or, perhaps, as if he was so used to suicidal action in clone form that he rarely thought to deny himself anything in that state. Death—dissipation, nothingness—always seemed so very close, so acutely possible, that it didn’t seem worth it to hold back.

Sasuke’s signature was right outside the bedroom, now, and even without being able to hear his unsteady, panting breaths, Itachi would have known he was awake. Lust always made Sasuke burn brighter, his signature spiking in Itachi’s awareness, an unmistakeable flare in his mental landscape. Then the bedroom door swung open from being kicked, and jealousy was suddenly all that Itachi could feel.

Sasuke didn’t see him. _Couldn’t_ see him, too busy writhing in his clone’s obscene grasp. Sasuke’s legs were wrapped around his clone’s waist, and only one of his clone’s hands was squeezing Sasuke’s ass. The other hand was probably—“Ngh!”—make that definitely busy at Sasuke’s front.

The clone was watching Itachi, eyes active, when it asked the usual question. “Do you like it?”

“Niisan, how can you even…” Sasuke’s low, angry voice trailed off into a sudden gasp. “Hn.” Itachi could see his ass cheeks flex in the clone’s unyielding grip. Could see the way he lowered his head onto Itachi’s clone’s shoulder, the way he deliberately pressed himself a little closer. “You… you made me wait.” It had surely only been a few minutes of stimulation, and already Sasuke’s back muscles were locked tight—had he been wearing anything up there when the clone picked him up? He even sounded as if he were close to tears. “It’s been more than a _month_ , Niisan.”

“I know,” the clone said, smiling. “But, otouto, you didn’t answer my question.”

“I like it, I like it, _please_ —”

“That’s enough,” Itachi snapped. He’d had something like a plan already, having seen and absorbed his clone’s mischievous behaviour. He’d been prepared to wait, to watch for an opportunity while his clone fooled around with Sasuke, because whenever it had been a little too long since the last time, he often gave into the urge to tie Sasuke down securely before having him.

The clone would have given him an opening then. Had probably been planning on doing just that from the moment it’d picked up Sasuke downstairs. That was why it’d flashed its eyes at Itachi upon coming into the room; it had been taunting him. It knew just how possessive Itachi was. It wanted to rub that in Itachi’s face, heedless of his anger. Glorying, almost, in the fact that it knew that the moment Itachi saw it touching Sasuke, it was going to be dismissed with a kunai to the heart instead of a careful twist of chakra.

“Niisan?” Sasuke stirred restlessly in the clone’s arms. “What are you—”

Itachi saw, in sickening slow motion, the way Sasuke was shifting. Turning to look, curious about just what ‘Itachi’ was staring at, and even though Itachi could have hid, could have disappeared from view, he found himself standing there instead, unable to move a muscle.

He saw the moment Sasuke realized it was him. He saw the way Sasuke’s eyes widened, suddenly active, making sure. Saw the red drain away from Sasuke’s eyes, even as he flushed. It was as if the energy from the Sharingan was bleeding off into his face, his neck, his bare upper body.

When the clone laid Sasuke’s stiff, embarrassed frame down on the bed, Itachi could not help but notice that Sasuke’s nipples were just a little swollen, the way they usually were after they’d been played with. “Did it tease your chest to wake you up?” he found himself saying. “Did you like it, even though it wasn’t me?”

“N-no,” Sasuke said, flinching, because the fucking clone was _still_ stroking his cock, all while giving Itachi a blank, unconcerned, ‘who, me?’ sort of look, as if it hadn’t fucking planned this. “Niisan, I thought it was you. I wouldn’t—I didn’t mean—”

“Shut up.”

Sasuke’s mouth wobbled shut. He didn’t seem to know where to look; his panicked gaze kept flitting between Itachi and the clone and the clone’s practised hands as they worked their way up and down his slim, stiff cock. Everything about the situation was enraging. Sasuke was too afraid, too guilty to squirm with his usual abandon. The clone had stopped paying attention to Itachi, and was watching the way Sasuke’s legs tensed as it stripped them bare with an intensity bordering on madness, and Itachi kept palming and replacing the kunai in his right sleeve, aching to be allowed to use it.

It was when those thieving fingers— _his_ fingers—started to drift back beyond Sasuke’s balls that Itachi finally snapped. The clone smirked at him knowingly when he dismissed it with a jerk of chakra, and then he had to face Sasuke’s watery, reluctant gaze staring up at him.

Itachi didn’t say anything. The memories were flooding in, overwhelming in their intensity, Sakura’s chatter a jarring contrast from what had come right after. Sasuke had been dozing on the too-large couch in the living room, a thin t-shirt and a worn pair of sweatpants the only thing on his rangy, muscled body. His cock had been tenting the front of his pants, and a swift, shameless grope of it had confirmed the clone’s deduction that the target—their favourite target—had neglected to wear boxers.

The shirt had come off next. Sasuke had flinched on having his nipples bit, licked and sucked, but hadn’t woken. It had taken the sudden, merciless intrusion of three fingers in his ass to startle him out of slumber, and all he’d done was moan. He’d trembled in the clone’s arms, squirming eagerly in its grip. “Niisan,” he’d whispered. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”

So that was why he’d already been close to tears. Now, as he writhed around Itachi’s fingers, his tight hole sucking them in, those previously unshed tears were trickling down his face, and Itachi was no longer quite so furious with his absent clone.

After all, if it had been him, he was quite sure he wouldn’t have woken Sasuke up so bluntly. He’d probably have carried Sasuke up here and sat there and watched Sasuke sleep, and only woken his brother up when he could no longer stand to wait. “Do you want it with my clone?”

“No,” Sasuke gasped. Lying, and he knew it, because he’d shut his eyes tightly. He’d never seemed to get used to bearing with the way Itachi smiled at him after catching him out. “I just… I missed you, so I’m just…”

“Ssh,” Itachi said, bending in over his shivering brother. “Niisan will make one for you in a little while, okay?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More clone shenanigans to come in the next chapter ;D


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Itachi makes good on his promise to have his clones service his brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please heed the extra tag I added today re genderswap. It will be temporary and entirely porn-related, and if m/f piv is Unacceptable in your m/m porn, you can safely read the first and last couple paragraphs of that scene to glean any story-related stuff from it ;D
> 
> Also, just fyi, Itachi is pretty violent towards his clones. I don't linger on it in a graphic way because that's not what he's into, but. It comes up >.>

He made three clones that night. One to hold down Sasuke’s arms after he’d thrust his aching cock into Sasuke’s slick, yielding ass for the first time. Then, because it was so satisfying to use more of himself to hold Sasuke still, he’d made another clone to plug up Sasuke’s mouth, to smother his brother’s frantic moans.

Then, remembering gossip, he’d made one last clone and ordered it to walk home and dismiss itself. That noticeably sullen clone had glared at him, but had shuffled off as directed, which was probably for the best, since Itachi had been feeling somewhat light-headed by then.

Now, some time after the third clone had finished its task, Sasuke’s gaze was blank, his mouth slightly open, his long, lean frame slack with pleasure. In this state, he would do anything, promise anything Itachi wanted. But all Itachi wanted was this. This sight of him, whimpering as he was fucked, his whole body sticky and bruised and _used_ , all of it performed by Itachi’s many capable hands.

He’d had to take a break when his third clone dismissed itself, since it had been petty enough to wake Yuri up and sleep with her beforehand, making an unnecessary attempt at preserving their schedule and disrupting Itachi’s focus all at once. In addition to that, three orgasms in a row was Itachi’s soft limit; even someone with his monstrous libido needed a breather after that much exertion. So he’d frowned and handed Sasuke over to his remaining two clones, warning them to take it easy.

He’d had to kill one of them when he heard it grumbling something about how it didn’t think they needed to take turns, and that Sasuke was loose enough to safely take a second cock in his hungry little hole. Thankfully, Sasuke had been too distracted by the clone pounding his ass to hear anything he shouldn’t, and he hadn’t complained when Itachi claimed him next, because the clone that had just been fucking him had been hurrying around to his front, eager to take the chance to fill his mouth with come.

“I don’t know how you’re still awake,” Itachi said, unsteadily. He hadn’t used Sasuke’s mouth yet tonight, but the rush of memories from the dismissal of the clone that had done so had been satisfying enough that he thought he could do without it just this once. “I don’t think you even have anything left to let out.”

“Wh… want it,” Sasuke mumbled. Now that there was no cock in his mouth, no helpful hand in his hair to hold his head up, his upper body was almost fully flat against the bed, and his knees were splayed obscenely wide. This wasn’t Itachi’s favourite position—he’d much prefer, generally, to be more able to see Sasuke’s face—but it did have its benefits. Knowing that Sasuke needed his support to keep his ass upright was very soothing. Seeing Sasuke’s hole being stretched and filled by his cock was even more of a plus. “It’s—hngh—’sbeen a month, okay?”

“You can’t expect me to believe you didn’t get any during all that time,” Itachi said, dryly. Breathlessly. The real downside of fucking Sasuke in this position was how stimulating it could be. Seeing and feeling what he was doing to his brother meant that he had to be careful, had to delay his building orgasm with chakra. “We both know you’re not a monk, otouto.”

“And y-you?” Sasuke’s voice was nearly too unsteady to be intelligible. “You’ve… I know you fuck her.” His voice was thin, now. Angry. “I hate it.”

“I have to.” Yuri couldn’t possibly use the gear needed for viable artificial insemination without _someone_ noticing, at least not this early in their marriage. Eventually, once the frankly ridiculous amount of good-luck seals came down, and the elders felt reassured enough by their disgusting snooping through some of those same seals, things would change. “I don’t want her, you know. It’s just something I have to do.”

Itachi had already known his brother was uncomfortable—to put it mildly—with how well he and Yuri got along. He was never going to tell Sasuke that she had been good for him, during the honeymoon. That sleeping with someone who knew what he really wanted and didn’t mind being tortured a little to ease his frustration was a real comfort. “I’m never going to want her the way I want you,” he said, instead, bending in low, bringing his lips as close as he could to Sasuke’s reddened ear. “Never.”

Scowling, Sasuke turned his face, pressing it against the mattress, but not before Itachi had seen another set of tears trickling down his cheek. “Promise?”

For answer, Itachi trailed one hand up Sasuke’s sticky, sweaty back, curling it into his hair. Then he straightened, using that extra point of leverage, using the grip he had on Sasuke’s hip to yank Sasuke back onto his cock hard enough that Sasuke couldn’t hold back a thin, shocked yelp. “What do you think ‘never’ means?” he growled. “Are you stupid?”

“I—hngh—”

Itachi had no more energy to respond. Everything he had was going into the new, punishing pace he set. He fought the sudden, clawing need he felt to mark Sasuke, easing it as best as he could with rough handling that would leave few outward signs. He couldn’t leave any love bites tonight, not when Sakura hadn’t yet set back a clone from Ino’s, but he _could_ make Sasuke ache, leave him sore and gaping and all too aware of who it was that had the strongest claim on him.

Already, Sasuke was tightening helplessly around him, sobbing every time Itachi bottomed out in his needy hole. Probably, if he kept on like this, Sasuke would shudder and spill once more into the already damp bedsheets. But Itachi knew even as he thought of it that he didn’t want to wait.

When he bent in over Sasuke, changing the angle of his thrusts without easing up on his pace, Sasuke let out a brief, choked cry. He didn’t really need to to be helped toward his inevitable orgasm with a few swift strokes of his twitching cock, but Itachi did it anyway, breathing hard, almost able to taste the watery spurts that spilled all over his hand.

In the end, it wasn’t long before Itachi’s less-than-rigorous chakra block failed, leaving him groaning as he pumped spurt after spurt into the slick heat of his brother’s ass. For a long, foolish moment, he couldn’t bring himself to move, couldn’t bring himself to disrupt the warmth he felt from being this close, this intimate with Sasuke.

Then he felt the weak slap of Sasuke’s hand against his side, and reacted immediately, pulling back and out. “Alright, otouto?”

“Hn.” The sound was weak, almost too quiet to be heard, which meant Sasuke was probably a breath or two from passing out, and needed to be handled gently.

“I won’t make you wait so long again,” Itachi whispered, and wasn’t surprised to receive only another quiet, wordless sound as his answer. “Now, let’s get you cleaned up…”

Initially, Itachi had used the task of wiping Sasuke clean as just another way to grope his fill, or to entice Sasuke into spreading for him one more time. Before they’d started fucking, Itachi had only rarely been able to both look at and touch Sasuke’s naked body, half because Sasuke rarely ever got sick enough to need to be wiped down all over, and half because Itachi had been reluctant to ever test his already tenuous control. So when he _could_ finally touch, he had indulged himself relentlessly.

Nowadays, he didn’t feel so frantic, so hungry for every extra stroke and lick and touch that he could barely control himself. He could suck Sasuke’s limp, sticky cock clean just because he wanted to. He could take his time fingering Sasuke’s ass, expelling the cum with careful, twisting strokes, and not be overwhelmed by the need to fill Sasuke up again.

The urge was still there, of course. If Sasuke had been awake enough to flinch and squirm at his invasive touch, Itachi would likely have given in to the ever-present craving to fuck him again, perhaps a bit more gently. As it was, Sasuke barely stirred, his not-quite-slumber undisturbed by his brother’s shameless attentions.

“I’ll never want anyone else,” Itachi murmured, secure in the knowledge that he would not be overheard. Things, his muzzy brain told him, could still go wrong enough that they had to separate; if they did, he would much prefer that Sasuke continue on with his life without worrying about what would become of him. “That’s not a promise; it’s a fact.” Foolish as the words were, it was still satisfying to say them.

* * *

The first thing Sasuke did the next morning was to expressly forbid Itachi from ever using shadow clones with him again.

“I…” Itachi didn’t want to sound stupid, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say, anything other than: “I thought you liked them.”

“Niisan, you _killed_ one,” Sasuke said, each word crisp and emphatic. “I think that’s all that needs to be said.”

“But—” _I thought you wouldn’t notice,_ he wanted to say, only to close his mouth when Sasuke pinned him with a _look_. “I won’t do it again?”

“Anything that gets you killing people while we’re,” Sasuke said, flushing, “while we’re doing it—and don’t give me that look, clones _definitely_ count as people in this case, Niisan—anything like that is, by definition, something that should never be allowed to happen again.”

“You let Naruto use clones,” Itachi said, even though he didn’t know that he wanted to use his clones anymore, if Sasuke didn’t want them enough to risk his admittedly disproportionate reaction to them. “I don’t see why he should be allowed that if I’m not.”

Sasuke, instead of answering, made a high-pitched, wordless noise, and then tried to roll onto his side, only to give up with a frustrated hiss, his dark scowl likely due to how much his ass was aching. “ _Naruto_ doesn’t get so jealous of his clones that he kills them before they can fuck me,” Sasuke said, each pointed word of his a blow to Itachi’s pride. “Honestly, Niisan. You scared me.”

“I did?”

Sasuke went still. “Yeah,” he said, his voice a little lower than before, and suddenly Itachi was annoyed again at his wretched clones, because he could tell that Sasuke wasn’t being completely honest. He hadn’t noticed, last night, but he bet that if he combed back through his jumbled, rapacious memories, he’d be able to pinpoint the moment Sasuke realized what Itachi had just done, and reacted to it by getting even tighter. “So. Don’t use them to do me again, okay?”

“Fine,” Itachi said. There was something wickedly satisfying about agreeing to only the letter of what someone was saying, all while knowing you wouldn’t adhere to the spirit of it. Any guilt he felt on misleading his brother was easily assuaged by the knowledge that Sasuke would probably enjoy being used by Itachi’s supposed clone a lot more than he’d ever want to admit. “I won’t use my clones again.”

“Don’t even use them for messages,” Sasuke said, dashing all his plans. “Not unless it’s really urgent. Promise me.”

Sullenly, Itachi nodded. Sometimes, much as he enjoyed the fact that Sasuke was no longer the hot-headed, clingy boy he could never have and never bear to push away, at times like this, he couldn’t help but miss the Sasuke that had always, always, always believed him. “I still think it’s unfair.”

Sasuke simply sniffed, refusing to dignify his complaint with a direct answer. “I’m going back to sleep,” he mumbled. “Wake me up for anything other than food, and I’ll…”

“You’ll what?” Itachi trailed his fingers down his brother’s bare, lightly tanned back, lingering over the one bruise his heavy-handed treatment had left the night before. “You’ll tell me to stop?”

“I’ll tell Naruto,” Sasuke said, his gleeful tone making it entirely unnecessary for him to specify what he was threatening to tell. “Heh, I knew it’d work.”

Frustrated, Itachi turned his teasing touches into slightly less suggestive strokes, leaning into them so that Sasuke relaxed beneath his hands, basking in the impromptu massage. _What I need,_ he thought, as he watched Sasuke drift back to sleep, _is something just as embarrassing to use against him._

* * *

Over the next few months, Itachi bided his time, letting Sasuke slowly go from smirking at him now and then to simply luxuriating in his presence the way he’d always done. Then, when he felt confident that Sasuke had mostly forgot to be on guard against him, he began to keep his eye out for the perfect opportunity to go in for the kill.

He’d long since settled on the idea of a gender transformation for one, or perhaps even both of them, as the right tool for the job. Sasuke had always rolled his eyes whenever ‘Naruko’ put herself on offer, and six months into his marriage, he had yet to seem to catch on to Sakura’s bald attempts at getting him to explore the female form along with her and Ino.

One night, when a tipsy Sasuke started in on his usual tirade about how women still tended to look at Itachi, instead of soothing him through it with a hot, wet kiss, Itachi patted his back, listening intently. “It’s been six… sev-no, eight, _eight_ fucking months since you married,” Sasuke mumbled. “I c’d understand if they were that way with me, I know the way people gossip about how I let Ino and Sakura go on, an’ how I visit Kiba’n’Sai, but you, _you_ don’t ever let yourself be seen visiting anyone.”

“I only resigned from the Corps after Naruto’s third year there,” Itachi said, rubbing soothing circles over Sasuke’s tense shoulder blades. “It’s natural for people to wonder a little, considering that.”

“You don’t even _like_ women. Doesn’ everyone know that?” Then, when Itachi prudently declined to say anything about how little that counted for anyone with the slightest inkling about what went on in the Corps, Sasuke shifted restlessly, and added: “It can’t be that good with you, as, as, uh. A woman.”

“Oh?” Was there any better opportunity than this? Itachi chuckled, unable to help himself, but the moment his laughter ran out, he was careful to tinge his tone with only the slightest bit of challenge. “Want to try?”

“Who would,” Sasuke grumbled. But of course, moments later, he was shoving Itachi’s groping hands away, and then struggling through the seals for that silly jutsu of Naruto’s, and then… “Howizzit? I’m blinding your eyes, right?”

Sasuke’s voice wasn’t the same. It was lower. His Adam’s apple was gone. His face wasn’t even an inch softer, but his hair was longer, a messy, spiky sprawl of dark silk, barely long enough to cover the small round breasts he’d given himself. It was probably the sort of result Naruto would have shaken his head over and criticized as an utter failure of imagination.

Itachi, still staring, could almost hear Naruto lecturing about how you couldn’t leave everything up to the _Oiroke_ and its tendency to model purely from your genetics. You had to tailor every single thing to your target’s tastes, just the way you would if you were going old school and leaning on cross-dressing and the delicate finishing touch of a genjutsu. But Sasuke had just gone through the seals and let it go like that.

“What?” Sasuke was frowning now, his former, mocking smirk having given way to annoyance. “Why’re you—mmph!”

Like this, even though the only truly soft thing about Sasuke was the swell of his chest, the alcohol had dulled his reflexes just enough that it let Itachi imagine that this was real, this was really how his sister might feel beneath him.

“Nnh!” Sasuke’s eyes went wide, his thighs—her thighs clamping down around Itachi’s invading hand too late to stop him. She was narrow, tight, and only just starting to get wet. “Niisan, d-don’t—hgh—”

“You’re always such a tease,” Itachi said, coldly, his eyes active, tracking Sasuke’s panicked, but definitely aroused micro-expressions. He could easily imagine how it had happened, how it had come to this, her lounging naked in Itachi’s bed, comfortable only because Itachi had assured her she could be. Nakedness, he would have said, meant nothing between siblings, and of course she would have believed him. He had more than enough control to maintain the lie, after all. He had been trained for it. “I know you look at me too.”

“I,” Sasuke said, breathlessly, getting into it, “I _don’t_. I’ve, I’ve never…”

“You’re looking right now,” Itachi growled. “Aren’t you?”

Whimpering, Sasuke tried to turn away, but he wouldn’t let her. He was heavier, and she was already so wet. “Niisan, you can’t.” He knew she could feel his cock burning against her thigh. “You _can’t_.” Probably, she was worried it wouldn’t fit. “Stop it!”

“You’re so wet you could take two of me right now,” Itachi gloated, twisting his fingers inside her. “Relax, okay? Niisan won’t hurt you.”

“That’s not—agh!” Fuck, was she already about to come? It was only three fingers, she’d taken so much more than that before—no, no, there was no before. That was only in his dreams. “Don’t! You can’t, don’t, don’t put it in…”

Sasuke was on the verge of tears, tight around his fingers, bucking beneath him, raging in his iron grip. Itachi was going to need every last bit of his control not to hurt her. “Ssh,” he said, even though he didn’t really want her to be quiet. “If you’re like this, imouto, it’ll only make it harder for me to keep from coming inside you. You don’t want to get pregnant, right?”

Sasuke’s sudden shriek choked off into a helpless gurgle. He had probably been a little too rough with his entrance, but it really wasn’t his fault. She sucked him in, her tight little cunt rippling around him, urging him on when he tried to take his time. It wasn’t Itachi’s fault.

Hot tears trickled down onto the back of one of the hands he had over her mouth, and Itachi flinched, suddenly remembering that this wasn’t—she wasn’t—“Sasuke? Is it—am I too much?”

“Don’t,” Sasuke sobbed. “Don’t look.” His cunt was a vise around Itachi’s cock, and the moment Itachi tried to pull back, he—her shaking hands fisted in the sides of his dishevelled, unbuttoned shirt. “Don’t stop.”

So Itachi didn’t stop, at least not until he was on the edge, and horribly aware that he yearned to continue, yearned to feel his brother’s cunt with come. He didn’t even know if you could get pregnant like this, in a fake, anatomically correct female body, and he _did not want_ to know this about himself, know that he wanted to look at his brother’s ripe belly and swollen breasts and feel the dirty satisfaction of knowing he had been the cause of them.

Sasuke moaned as she swallowed every drop of Itachi’s cum. She shook and came beneath him again and again, and she begged and whined and cursed him when he refused to do anything but use her ass the second time around.

“I need it,” she whimpered. “I need something bigger in there, niisan. Why—why won’t you do it? Why do you always punish me?”

Afterwards, Itachi did not dare to do more than hold Sasuke’s still-female body as he drifted off to sleep. Then, once Sasuke was out, Itachi rushed to the bathroom to wipe himself down with cold, wet cloths, and then to the nearest empty clan training ground to try and fill his treacherous head with anything other than the thought of his brother’s wet, cum-filled cunt.

Thankfully, the next morning, it seemed the experience had shaken Sasuke just enough that he didn’t even try to bring it up, much less connect it to the incident with the clones. Defeated, Itachi resigned himself to continuing on with another, unspeakably embarrassing weak spot exposed. It hadn’t been so bad these last few months, he told himself. Sasuke wasn’t anywhere near as petty about the clone thing as Itachi might have been in his place; handing over this new weakness to him wouldn’t make things any worse.

* * *

He was—it was not Itachi.

He/it was a clone with orders (partially fulfilled. Report to mission desk completed seven and a half minutes ago; report to Yuri-sama due next). He/it proceeded to the most likely correct location to wait (Yuri-sama’s preference was that all clones wait in the kitchen unless urgently tasked).

The kitchen was empty for ten and a quarter minutes. Yuri-sama was probably still tied up at the station. He/it sighed, restless, and began to move about the kitchen, reasoning that completing a few chores was a good way to use this otherwise wasted time.

He/it was halfway through the dishes in the sink when Sasuke-kun stalked up the path that led to the front door. He/it—Itachi froze.

_Greet, hide or disappear?_ he thought, even though the second option would upset Sasuke-kun, and the last option would cause it/him to fail the secondary mission. The door was opening already, swinging hard. Greet, then.

“Niisan?”

“Sasuke, I’m—mmph—the—hnn…” Failure to greet. Failure to maintain precautionary distance. Sasuke-kun was always so delightfully forward when he’d gone without service from the Primary for more than a couple weeks, and his mouth was inescapable. He/it was erect now, just from the taste of Sasuke-kun’s mouth, from the wet stroke of tongue against tongue, from the feeling of Sasuke’s tall, lean frame pressing in close.

A warning was necessary. “Sasuke, I’m not—”

“Shut up.” Sasuke-kun was already sliding down onto his knees, his clever hands trailing down along with him. “Let me have this, Niisan.”

This… it was very clear what ‘this’ was supposed to be. Sasuke-kun was rubbing Itachi’s cock through the slightly dusty cloth of his/its trousers, one hand maintaining a tight, pleasing grip while the other sought out Itachi’s belt, Itachi’s buttons. One more subpar attempt at issuing a warning was made, a careful hand curling tight around Sasuke-kun’s wrist, pushing gently even as he/it said: “Sasuke, I’m not supposed to do this.”

Sasuke-kun pushed back, and the dry heat of his hand closed around Itachi’s bare, aching cock. “I’ve missed you,” he said, his tone aggressive, his gaze aggrieved. “Can’t I?” And then, in grand Seduction Corps tradition, he went ahead anyway, likely having reasoned that forgiveness would be easier to obtain in the aftermath. “Ghlk… nhnn…”

Habit and instinct had already taken over. He/it was Sasuke-kun’s niisan, after all, and could not deny Sasuke anything he demanded, and Sasuke was demanding more with every eager lick, every suck, swallowing wetly around Itachi’s cock, coming perilously near to choking himself on it even without his/its eager, illicit help.

A few swallows later, he/it had their hands on the back of Sasuke’s head, and was controlling the pace of entry. He/it was not supposed to hurt Sasuke-kun, not like this; that privilege was reserved for Primary. But Primary was in the field, and Sasuke-kun had been desperate enough to swoop down on the slightest sign of his brother having appeared in the village, so perhaps a little hurt was due him. Just a little.

When he/it began to be more rough, the change in the timbre of Sasuke-kun’s moans proved he/it had made the right decision. Sasuke-kun’s eyes watered. His hands clutched at the waist of Itachi’s unbuttoned trousers. He closed his eyes, slackened his throat. _Accepted_ it.

It was impossible not to immediately come. It was fire under their skin—selfishness—hands gripping Sasuke-kun’s hair a little too tightly. Each pulse of his/its cock was a sweet agony.

Afterwards, as he/it withdrew Itachi’s cock, Sasuke-kun coughed, but kept on clinging. He/it knew what to do next, knew the correct path to take: distance. Distance and restraint would better preserve the fiction it was best that Sasuke-kun believe, so Sasuke-kun was less likely to find out that he/it had broken Primary’s promise about he/it staying out of Sasuke-kun’s sexual affairs. But he/it had already transgressed, would likely already be punished, so… “Get up and turn around.”

Yes, the right choice. Sasuke-kun stumbled to his feet, still panting, his eager gaze on Itachi’s already thickening cock. He did not turn around, but he began unbuttoning himself in a guilty, red-faced hurry, shoving his tight-fitted trousers and boxers down his firm thighs. “Where should I—hrk!”

He/it would definitely be punished for this, for cutting off Sasuke-kun’s low inquiry with a hand around his throat. For dragging Sasuke-kun toward the mostly bare kitchen island, forcing him down over it and shocking him open with a harsh burst of lightning chakra.

Well, not quite open. Sasuke-kun, keening, began to spray the kitchen island’s sleek wooden cabinets with strong spurts of come. He/it paused just long enough to bend down and collect as much of that liquid as possible onto his/its fingers and Itachi’s cock, before resuming his/its forceful intrusions.

“No,” Sasuke-kun gasped, his voice raw, the ringing echoes of his cries sounding shockingly loud in the empty confines of the kitchen. “No—it—ah! _Ahh!_ ”

His legs were limp now, no longer able to support his weight. Breathing heavily, he/it adjusted his/its angle. Sasuke-kun was far more tight than expected. Another orgasm would loosen him up. He/it wanted that. He/it had never been allowed to look on while this sort of thing was happening, and had only once been allowed to participate, and only one of he/it had gone as far as burying Itachi’s cock all the way in Sasuke-kun’s greedy little hole.

He/it would probably never be allowed this kind of chance again. So when Sasuke-kun arched, sobbing, constricting deliciously around Itachi’s cock, he/it bit their lip and persevered. He/it was going to…

“N-niisan,” Sasuke-kun sounded broken, but the slight, backwards twitch of his hips proved differently. “Fill me. Fill—nrh—”

Sasuke-kun’s words degenerated into grunts. He/it could not stop, could not do anything other than give what was wanted. He/it came then, jerking in and out, hardly able to breathe for the pleasure tearing he/it apart.

Ah. Destabilization was imminent. Perhaps he/it had overdone it a moment ago, with the lightning chakra.

“Niisan?”

“Please convey to Yuri-sama the fact that Itachi-sama anticipates a return within the next ten days, if all goes smoothly at the negotiations,” he/it said, and felt something that was part smugness and part chagrin when Sasuke-kun turned a wavering, incredulous gaze back toward he/it. “Please try to recall that this one warned you as well as it could.”

“That—you—!”

The world twisted away. Reformed, melding with new-old memories of two dreary days spent on smiling and nodding at people Itachi would rather see dead. Three minutes after combing through the rush of memories from his clone, Itachi was half-hard, furious and envious and utterly aghast, but all he could do was continue to sit there with a calm smile on his face.

_The next time I have a free moment,_ he thought, behind that smile, _I’m going to make a shadow clone and strangle it to death._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jinxing myself one more time by saying I _think_? maybe? the next chapter will be the last one? 
> 
> Stay tuned (〃∇〃)╭~~~
> 
> ** (Edited 9.10.19, minor fix) **


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inevitably, Itachi and Sasuke's relationship changes after they marry, just not in the way Itachi was dreading.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while, right~~? Slightly more vanilla chapter than usual because why not.

Sometimes, Itachi felt like the gods were mocking him, and, by extension, the whole of the Uchiha.

The Uchiha’s perfect, terrifyingly smart clan heir, unmatched in all things, got married to a full-blooded and only distantly related cousin neither too early or too late, only to find that the two of them could not make a child together. Yuri’s face upon hearing the medic-nin’s verdict had been quite the picture; Itachi had not been at all surprised to have her disappear for a few days after that.

He _was_ surprised to have her come home dragging a scowling, murderously glaring younger clansman he vaguely knew. “Good evening, Takehiko-kun,” Itachi said, his gaze moving between Yuri’s outward serenity and Uchiha Takehiko’s distorted features. “Care to join us for dinner?”

“This one couldn’t possibly impose,” was Takehiko’s first, venomously polite response, which was utterly undercut by a hard shove from Yuri that forced him into the house past Itachi, who had thoughtfully stepped aside to accommodate him. “Why are you—mmph!”

Itachi couldn’t help but smile, watching the younger man’s disproportionate reaction to being pinned against the nearest wall and passionately kissed by Yuri. Shock, then triumph, then bewilderment, followed by shame, because Yuri wasn’t content with a kiss, and very obviously did not care that Itachi was still there to see her ruthless plunder of the man Itachi was now almost certain was her ‘idiot’, the man she truly loved.

Itachi remembered, now; Takehiko was a product of a secret, scandalous out-clan union, and had compounded the sin of his birth by only activating his Sharingan in his late teens. Said Sharingan had then remained at the lowest level of evolution, as if to add insult to injury, and Takehiko had been sidelined as a result. Enraged by the constant snubs and pointed disregard of his fellow clansmen, he’d turned down the standard offer to join the KPMF and thrown himself into out-village patrol instead, and had made a good enough reputation out there that Itachi had found it easy to cut off petty attempts to further reduce Takehiko’s clan benefits. Father had rolled his eyes and muttered that his son was still too soft, but hadn’t put up any real opposition to Itachi’s decision.

_He won’t thank you for it,_ had been Father’s only warning, not that Itachi had needed it. The way Takehiko had scowled at him when he first opened the front door had not come as a surprise to him; Uchiha were proud as a rule, and didn’t always take aid well. The fact that the source of the aid had also been the smooth, untouchable clan heir that had blithely stolen Takehiko’s sweetheart had only made things worse.

Though perhaps, after this—after finding himself shoved down onto the tatami and ridden by his sweetheart right in front of her tolerantly smiling husband, Takehiko would be able to let some things slide. “Don’t… Yuri, you—ngh!”

“I’ll leave the two of you to it,” Itachi said, blandly, and left via one of the windows in the kitchen, because opening the door would mean exposing his wife in the middle of her vigorous, extremely unconventional activity. “See you tomorrow, Yuri-chan.”

In the end, though Takehiko put up some resistance to the idea of his being the one to further the clan heir’s august line, he caved within a month. He was never quite right around Itachi after that, his unnecessary guilt making him curt and awkward at the best of times. Despite his hatred of the clan, he was really quite traditional at heart, rigid in his preconceived notions of what was proper.

Two months before Yuri was due with twins, Itachi finally indulged Takehiko’s persistent offer to atone for his sins by being punished in successive spars. The resulting fuck (which Itachi was quite surprised even happened, given how uptight Takehiko was about everything) was explosive, delicious in a way Itachi didn’t at all expect.

It wasn’t until afterwards, with Takehiko sprawled and flushed and languid in Itachi and Yuri’s bed, that Itachi realized just why Takehiko was so compelling to him. Takehiko didn’t look anything like Sasuke, who had leaned more and more to the ‘dangerous’ end of typical Uchiha looks as he got older. Sasuke scowled a lot because he found a lot of things to scowl about; Takehiko, on the other hand, was the type to scowl a lot because he felt he looked a little too pretty to be taken seriously when he wasn’t frowning. He was much closer to Itachi’s end of the scale in that way, except for the fact that he lacked the confidence to brazen it out and teach anyone who underestimated him due to his looks a lesson they would always remember.

Earlier, though, when Takehiko shrank away from Itachi’s touch, only to give into it, gasping, pleading for more, all Itachi had been able to feel was a familiar, dark satisfaction. It felt right that he had the same effect on his prudish cousin that he had on Sasuke. Reassuring, in a way that bothered him.

_Am I really still unsure of Sasuke?_ Itachi thought, as he stalked toward the bathroom. It didn’t make sense to be; if Sasuke had been a mission target, he’d have long since been feeding Itachi whatever intel or political concessions were necessary for mission success. Sasuke was married, but _his_ , his in a way that defied convention and common sense; the only thing that could change that now was nothing short of death, or something just as serious.

Still, once Itachi had washed off Takehiko’s pleasantly woody scent and any other such evidence of their encounter, he went downstairs and out the door and all the way to Sakura and Sasuke’s house. And though he brought along a bottle of sake and a share of the staggeringly large fruit basket that Takehiko had presented in honour of Yuri’s long-awaited pregnancy, he and Sakura knew very well that that wasn’t why he’d come by.

“He’s sleeping,” she said, in a whisper. “Don’t wake him up, he was up all night with the kids.”

Nodding, Itachi made his way upstairs in utter silence, pausing only to look in on his slumbering nephew and his nieces. Then he went padding into the main bedroom, and sat by Sasuke’s side, soothing himself with the all too familiar sound of Sasuke’s light snores.

* * *

The real test to Itachi’s illicit relationship with Sasuke was an unexpected one. Or rather, an insufficiently expected one, given that Itachi was smart enough to have long since formed an idea of just how much time your own children would occupy in your life. He’d thought himself ready for the challenge, prepared to meet it with all the planning and time management skills he’d picked up over the years.

What he expected to happen was this: that he and Sasuke would get their wives pregnant twice in the span of three or four years, and then weather their children’s formative years one way or another, snatching time to see each other when they could. By the time their youngest was five years old, and thus able to be pawned off for a set amount of hours to the new-ish Konoha Kindergarten, things would settle into a nice routine, and though Itachi and Sasuke would likely have less time together than they liked, they’d still be see each other fairly often.

What actually happened… Well. While Itachi was dealing with the consequences of him and Yuri being medically unable to produce viable offspring, Sasuke and Sakura were running themselves ragged taking care of an utterly unforeseen set of triplets. By the time Itachi finally wrangled Takehiko, Yuri’s long-time lover, into getting her pregnant, the triplets were a year and a half old, and the last time he’d seen Sasuke properly awake had been something like four months ago.

_I chose this,_ Itachi would tell himself, every time he managed to sneak into Sakura and Sasuke’s bedroom so he could creep into their bed and wrap himself around the gently snoring Sasuke. _**We** chose this. I just need to hold on for a few more months._

Months turned into years. Somehow, the innumerable times he’d been stuck with managing Reina, Sarada and Mori had not really prepared him for the moment the frazzled nurse handed him Akina. Yuri had named her, and Takehiko had helped make her; realistically, seeing her for the first time shouldn’t have made Itachi feel a surge of pride.

It was bizarre, how much he loved her. She was his daughter in name only, a calculated product designed to make his marriage with Yuri look as it should. Her mere existence, along with Yuri’s difficulties in getting pregnant, and Yuri’s drawn-out labour, would buy him and Yuri five to ten years of peace with the elders, before anyone dared to needle him about why he hadn’t yet produced a proper (male) heir. And by that time, Itachi was all but certain he would be able to distract the elders with the possibility of moving away from direct family line inheritance of the heirship, which would naturally tie them up in manoeuvrings and infighting for months as they all tried to shove forward whichever of their favourite cousins or grandsons they thought should be named as heir.

Still, Itachi loved his daughter. _You shouldn’t exist,_ he’d think, while changing her nappy, and then she’d peer up at him and wave her hand wildly, and he’d activate his eyes again even though he had already stored hours and hours of her wide-eyed, indignant wriggling in his memories.

Akina was not the easiest child. Better than he vaguely remembered Sasuke being—no screaming fits over nothing—but she was more stubborn. Yuri had to be the one spooning mashed stuff to her at meals, or she would cry. Itachi had to be the one rocking her to sleep, or she would cry and sob as if the world was ending, her tiny fist beating against the chest or the arm or the neck of the unlucky person carrying her.

Play dates with the triplets were hell; someone always ended up offended, ended up screaming or gnawing on someone else. Itachi found it difficult to hide his seething jealousy whenever Takehiko came in from his border posting and got to be the perfect, fun Take-ji to his perfect, babbling, smiling Aki-chan. “One day,” Yuri said, one dreary afternoon, as she scowled at Takehiko giving Akina a piggyback ride in their back yard while the triplets chased him, “ _someday_ he’ll be here long enough that he gets added to her evil little schedule. We’ll see how he can keep grinning at her then.”

“You two will be alright?” Itachi said, even as he obsessively checked over the bento he’d been filling. “You’ll let me know if you need me to come back early?”

Yuri’s answer was an airy wave, so he stacked the filled bento boxes into their proper slots: six in the fridge for Yuri, Takehiko and the kids, then four into his expandable lunch bag, for him, Sasuke, Sakura and Ino. Then, hefting the lunch bag, he stopped by Yuri for a brief kiss, and then dodged past the giggling mass of toddlers, leaping for the roof of the house next door with no hesitation at all. Hesitating meant being caught by Mori or Sarada, who thought it the height of hilarity to cling to his leg and cry fake tears while he tried to peel them off.

Fifteen minutes later, Itachi had dropped off two bento at Ino’s house and picked up a bottle of sake in recompense. Ten minutes later, he was walking up to the front door of Sasuke and Sakura’s house when it burst open, revealing a panicked, half-dressed, bleary-eyed Sasuke. “Niisan, the kids—”

“Sakura dropped them off with us,” Itachi said, his voice low and soothing. “Everything’s fine.”

“But Sakura isn’t—”

“She’s at Ino’s,” Itachi said, snagging his brother by the shoulder, careful not to disturb the sloppy bandage around his lower left arm. “We planned this, remember?”

“But…” Sasuke scowled, resisting Itachi’s grip. The way he glared at the mess apparent in the living room was just another in the endless stream of conflicts between him and Sakura. “Ugh, I’m going to have to clean up before they get home, or it’ll just get worse.”

“You don’t have to clean up right now,” Itachi said, his tone pleasant, but uncompromising. “How about you go upstairs and get ready for me, while I put our lunch away?”

Sasuke’s stomach chose that moment to emit an embarrassingly loud gurgle, one that only made his scowl intensify. “Just give me that,” he muttered, snatching up the bento Itachi had offered and snapping it open in one smooth move. “I—hmm, the curry’s good today.”

“When is it _not_ good?” Itachi said. Even with Sasuke like this, his cheeks bulging as he stuffed himself with curry-filled onigiri, his only attire a pair of loose, worn ninja pants, his chin rough with stubble and his hair in messy spikes, Itachi still wanted nothing more than to pin him to the wall and devour him. “Sake?”

“Hrhgm. Later.”

Sasuke ended up eating his way through half of Itachi’s bento as well, before nodding off on the half-cleared couch. Itachi watched him for a moment, then turned away to get started on the mess.

Half an hour later, Sasuke straightened up from the ungainly sprawl he’d made against the soft cushions of the couch. He pitched in without a word, though he did end up shooting warning glances at one of Itachi’s blandly smiling clones, and slapping away the groping hand of another. By now, after years of witnessing Sasuke’s odd, love-hate relationship with the clones, Itachi had learned to turn a blind eye to that sort of byplay.

Then they were done tidying up—done enough that the clones couldn’t complain about having to finish the rest of it—and it was time for a shower. Necessity had forced them to take advantage of the undisturbed ten to twenty minutes of shower time often enough that it was now a habit to start their afternoons together with one.

It naturally didn’t hurt that Sasuke really, _really_ liked the many games they could play in the shower. There was ‘niisan, don’t come in’ and ‘niisan, what are you _doing_ ’; there was ‘niisan, can you wash my back’, ‘niisan, the soap ran out’ and ‘niisan, I forgot my towel’. Itachi’s personal favourite was the brazen ‘niisan, my body feels weird’, mostly because it allowed him so many choices in how to play it out.

If he felt impatient, he could move in and help Sasuke with his stiff little problem right away. If he wanted to take his time, he could stare and pinch and squeeze, all while warning Sasuke not to move. He could make Sasuke be the one to touch everything. He could talk Sasuke into turning around and going on all fours and reaching back to spread that tight ass open so that niisan could fix what had gone wrong.

Occasionally, when Sasuke bent over and spread as requested, there was a surprise. Sometimes, he’d already be prepared, be soft back there. Ready. Sometimes, he’d even have the tip of an anal plug peeking out, or the round, flared end of something more substantial. The best times, though, were the times he hesitated, and then slowly, guiltily obeyed, only to reveal his slick, well-fucked hole.

That didn’t happen anywhere as often as it’d used to—their having less time together because of the kids necessarily meant that Sasuke’s opportunities to get fucked by someone else were even thinner on the ground. But that only meant that, when it did happen, when he caught Sasuke out like this, it was even sweeter.

“Who?” Itachi said, his voice as even as he could make it, his fingers twitching with the urge to thrust in and see just how loose Sasuke had gotten. “Tell me who took you.”

Sasuke’s breath hitched. “It… it was…”

Something (or someone) interesting had to have been involved, to make Sasuke squirm like this, flushing all over even before he’d really been touched. None of the usual crowd had ever elicited this kind of reaction. The last time Itachi remembered Sasuke being like this, there’d been some sort of bet involved, and Sasuke had ended up sticky with what he’d confessed was the come of three unknown ANBU, and he’d refused to explain why he’d ever thought it a good idea to wander into one of the Corps’ multiple-use rooms the night before.

He’d refused, and refused, and _refused_ , not giving anything up even midway through another edging, so Itachi had shelved the issue and settled for fucking Sasuke until he passed out. But even then, he’d only given up because they’d only had two or so hours together that evening, and he hadn’t wanted to waste any more time on anything other than coming in his brother’s ass.

Today, they had six more hours, five if Yuri sent a clone over for an early extraction. Plenty of time. “You’re going to tell me,” Itachi murmured. “You’re going to tell me who did this to you.”

“Does it matter?” Sasuke said, his voice cracking a little. “Niisan, it’s embarrassing.”

“Oh?” Itachi said, stroking his hand up the outside of Sasuke’s taut right thigh, careful to keep the touch teasingly light. “Well, from what I can see, it seems that someone’s already done all that’s necessary to fix your problem.”

The incredulous look that put on Sasuke’s face was deeply satisfying; the way he twisted his body so he could frown up at Itachi only made it better. “What? But, but I’m still…”

“Ah, right. This?” Itachi reached forward, angling his hand down between Sasuke’s spread thighs, but he only brushed the tips of his fingers against the shaft of Sasuke’s stiff, leaking cock. “It’ll go away on its own.”

“Niisan.”

“Fine, fine, just let me check… hn.”

“W-what?” As always, Sasuke’s hole tightened eagerly around his fingers, drawing them in. “Niisan, that’s…”

“Isn’t this exactly what they did to you, earlier?” Itachi kept his strokes achingly slow, ignoring the way Sasuke was starting to move back and forth, clearly desperate for stronger stimulation. “When did you even have the time? I thought you and your team only came back from Kusa last night.”

Oh—a reaction, an abrupt tightening that was entirely out of pace with Sasuke’s previous movements. “Niisan, can we not?”

“Do you want niisan to fix your problem?” Itachi was already thinking of the people that had been on that mission with Sasuke, discarding the women and the known prudes, and then adding, with an increase in internal tension, one or two of the Suna nin that had escorted Sasuke’s somewhat injured team back to Konoha. There was something irrationally troubling about confronting the all-too-likely possibility that Sasuke might have had sex with someone Itachi didn’t really know well enough to be certain that they would have treated Sasuke as he deserved. “Do you really want to stop feeling strange?”

“I—niisan, I can’t—I don’t—hgh—want—”

“Maybe you want my clones to do it for you instead,” Itachi said, though there was no chance he’d ever give them the satisfaction. That they got to seize the chance to torture Sasuke in all sorts of lurid ways whenever Itachi was on a longer-term assignment was already more than they deserved. “Is that what you want?”

Sasuke, well aware of Itachi’s disinclination to share this particular sort of thing, wisely chose to bite his lip and say nothing. Unfortunately for him, Itachi was already in possession of enough information that he wouldn’t really need to hear Sasuke say anything at all; seeing Sasuke’s reaction would be enough.

“It’s someone on your team,” Itachi said. Then, when Sasuke gave vent to a defiant huff: “Someone assigned to shadow your team.”

Sasuke flinched.

“Hn. ANBU Lizard?” A shiver; not enough of a reaction. “Cat?” A deliberately wrong guess; Sasuke’s shoulders sagged a bit in relief. “Hound?”

Itachi had really been guessing on that one—he wasn’t privy to the ANBU duty roster, not because he didn’t have the clearance, but because it was strict policy that only the Hokage and the ANBU commander knew where every mask was. But the way Sasuke tightened down, the way his breaths suddenly began to come faster… “Really, otouto? Your former sensei?”

“Y-you’re one to talk, with how much you screwed your apprentice.”

Ah, it felt so good to be right. “Don’t be silly, otouto; we both know that was sanctioned. You, on the other hand—”

“Shut up.”

“Did you seduce him?” Probably, Itachi should have been projecting cool, hidden anger, so as to have the best chance of encouraging Sasuke to spill everything. Unfortunately, the thought of Sasuke being pinned down and fucked all night by Hound was simply too amusing. Itachi knew all too well how Hound tended to operate. Not Kakashi, who, according to a blushing Iruka, was an attentive, gentle lover; Hound was another, much more vindictive style of partner. And Kakashi would never have done it with anyone other than Iruka while unmasked. “Tell me. Tell me what you did to make him fuck you.”

“I didn’t _do anything_ ,” Sasuke spat. His voice wavered, distorted partly by fury and partly by what Itachi was almost sure was helplessness. So it had definitely been Hound. “H-he—he had to carry me back, I was tired, and, and he squeezed my ass on purpose, and because it’d been a while…”

“You got hard,” Itachi finished for him, savouring how tight he was getting, how much he was shivering. “And then what?”

“He…” Sasuke rocked back. “He wouldn’t stop. He s-started shocking me, and h-he—I begged him, I _begged_ , but he wouldn’t stop…”

“In your bedroom?” Sasuke tightened even more. “In our bed?”

There were two beds, now, in Sasuke and Sakura’s bedroom, the huge main bed and a small convertible couch that served as a place to bed down for any of the various third parties that could show up here. Sakura usually claimed it—the main bed, in her opinion, was far too soft—and as a result, Itachi and Sasuke long since got used to calling the main bed their own.

“Y-yes,” Sasuke whispered. “He made me—in our bed. I—”

“Did you come?”

“Yes. I… hgh, I, I know I shouldn’t have. I couldn’t help it.” And he’d apparently enjoyed it enough that just thinking about it as he confessed was getting him close to the edge, close to spilling onto the clean tile of the bathroom floor. “Niisan, please…”

“You haven’t told me everything yet,” Itachi said, coldly. “If Hound was only shocking you, why the hell are you still wet here?”

“I—hn!”

“So you _did_ seduce him.”

“Niisan—”

“You ground your slutty cock against his chest, or his shoulder,” Itachi said, inexorably. “You bothered him so much that he had to teach you a lesson.”

“N-no!”

“You led him to our bed,” Itachi said, his voice increasingly ragged, “and you begged him, and begged him and begged him, until the only thing he could do to shut you up was fill your greedy little hole with his cock.”

“Ngh—n-niisan—”

“You don’t deserve my help,” Itachi said, withdrawing his fingers. “You deserve punishment.”

Sasuke cried out when Itachi drove in with his cock. A second, heavy stroke had him spasming, convulsing, drenching the tiles beneath them with come.

“How do you even have anything left?” Itachi demanded, even as he reached around, desperate to catch what he could with his sticky fingers, desperate to feel every drop. “Didn’t you already let everything out for him last night?”

Sasuke’s response was one long, helpless moan. His cock was still dribbling come, his hole tight as a vice around Itachi’s cock. Was he still coming? Did it feel that good?

“Yes, niisan,” came the choked, unasked for answer. “Ngh—it’s—y-yes…”

“You liked feeling him fill you with come,” Itachi rasped. “Didn’t you?”

“Y-ye-ess…”

“Do you even need mine?”

“ _Yes_ …”

It wasn’t a good idea to do him so hard here; they were both getting old enough that they’d feel it in their knees tomorrow. But Itachi couldn’t help himself. It was perfect. Sasuke was such a perfect little slut. He was anchoring himself with chakra so that Itachi could give it to him hard without making him slip. His hole was so deliciously tight.

He was coming again, sobbing as he tightened around Itachi’s twitching cock, and his come was as thick as it had been the first time, wet, forceful spurts that made Itachi groan in the back of his throat. Fuck, Itachi could kiss Hound right now; Itachi knew, now, what Hound had done to Sasuke last night, other than shock and fuck him senseless.

“Nii… it hurts…” But Sasuke was still moving back against him, working his tight ass on Itachi’s cock, so it couldn’t hurt _too_ much.

“Did he kiss you?” Itachi slowed his thrusts, eager to hear what his brother would say. “Did he?”

“…yes?”

Itachi laughed, the sound hoarse and excited. “You fell asleep almost immediately, afterwards, right?”

“Y-yeah, but…”

“Oh, otouto,” Itachi said, with relish, “I’m afraid I know what’s wrong with you, now.” Eagerly, he sped up his thrusts, ignoring Sasuke’s plaintive, garbled questions, his half-pleading demands that niisan tell him everything _right now_. There was nothing like the feeling of spurting deep inside Sasuke’s slick, yielding hole even as he wriggled and cursed and resisted what was being done to him.

Finally, after Itachi had caught his breath again: “You’ve been dosed with a slow-acting aphrodisiac.”

And then added, as Sasuke railed at him, demanding details, demanding he _do something_ to the evil pervert of a sensei that had done this: “I’m afraid that’ll have to wait, otouto, until you’ve been properly taken care of.”

And then Itachi set about doing just that, all while thinking of just what Kakashi might like to get as a return gift for this selfless, glorious present. He’d assumed, wrongly, that Hound had not been listening to him mutter about how difficult it was to make the best of the little time he had with Sasuke due to their natural mismatch in stamina. The fact that the gift had taken something like a month and a half to ah, arrive, well, that was surely just due to the fact that Kakashi was a busy man. Itachi wouldn’t hold that against him.

What Itachi would hold against Hound—to the point that he already had a half-formed plan on just how he might go about collecting on the debt—was the fact that Hound had been so unrestrained with someone that hadn’t had the training to handle it. _That_ tendency would definitely have to be corrected. Forcefully, if need be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the last chapter, that's probably going to be chapter 6. Yes, I know I said that last time, shut up >.>
> 
> ** (Edited 9.10.19, to change ANBU Dog to Hound because consistency with later chapters and also I decided I liked 'Hound' better.) **


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two different holidays, one voluntary and one not, bring Itachi and Sasuke closer together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this is like, maybe 30% porn? But lots of hopefully idtastic, enjoyable interaction.

It was almost a year later when Itachi and Sasuke’s schedules and responsibilities finally aligned well enough that they didn’t have to limit themselves to a few hours of mutual indulgence. By now, no one thought much of how close their families were; the only annoying thing about settling their four rowdy children with two sets of doting grandparents was the fact that some of their peers decided to copy them wholesale, rudely inserting themselves and their spouses into what was already a decently large party.

In the end, ten brazen Konoha jonin went running down to a certain resort in the Land of Tea, and it was only limited to those ten because the all-important Shinobi Alliance meeting was due to take place in Mist in a month, and the other prospective interlopers were wrapped up in preparations for it. Itachi, annoyed at having Naruto, Kiba and their respective partners shoehorned into things, set a punishing pace on the way to the resort, and didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty about the strained groans and muttered complaints that came his way as a result.

There was also the minor annoyance of his initially having to keep up appearances in front of Kiba’s doe-eyed fiancée, Inuzuka Chie, who Itachi strongly suspected had to be the daughter of some civilian who had married in. She was competent, though. Polite to everyone, hilariously respectful to Naruto in particular, and nervous about if this section of Kiba’s weirdly varied friend group would accept her.

It took Sakura and Ino all of three hours into the first day to corrupt, or as they phrased it, _enlighten_ her. Which meant that when they settled in at the resort’s hotel, she didn’t resist when they whisked her off to their room for some quality private time. Kiba, funnily enough, seemed both relieved and a little indignant about it (“Do you know how long she’s ignored every single one of my hints to try it on with women? _Do you?_ ”), but didn’t immediately leap head first into scanning the crowd in a bid to search out some replacement arm candy.

Sai, as usual, seemed perfectly happy to recline in the shade and paint whimsical pictures of whatever crossed his path. Kiba dozed off and on next to him, whenever he wasn’t dogging his blushing fiancée’s footsteps in the few moments when she surfaced for air and was trying to pretend that she was spending the holiday with her intended in the traditional manner.

Naruto and Hinata were the only couple in the bunch that did anything more than lounge around or take up their favourite hobbies. Together, they seemed to have the energy of three people, dashing about going on tours, buying souvenirs and even going cliff climbing without chakra for an extra thrill. Itachi was never going to understand how they found that amount of happiness in such trivial things, but at least it meant he didn’t have to worry about making sure they were having a good time.

Yuri, for her part, slept and lounged around poolside in a barely-there bikini for their first two days at the resort, keeping off a truckload of admirers with the occasional lazy application of genjutsu. Then Takehiko showed up, looking guilty as ever, and the two of them disappeared into her room for the rest of the stay.

Itachi, as the unspoken host for the whole holiday, couldn’t very well follow her example. He was careful to appear every mealtime, and to take the occasional casual stroll about the property where other holidaying ninja, Konohan and not, could easily spot him.

Sasuke didn’t leave his room—their room, the middle bedroom of the luxury suite the three couples had all saved up to book together. Not even once was he allowed to step over the threshold. He’d agreed to it lightly, sarcasm clear in his expression while he, Itachi and Ino were speculating out loud about what the perfect vacation would look like. By now, three days into his essential captivity, Sasuke was probably regretting how easily he’d condemned himself to this.

“Comfortable?” Itachi said, setting down the tray of dishes he’d just obtained from room service for the both of them. “Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting you can’t speak.”

He hadn’t _wanted_ to gag Sasuke last night. He wasn’t even sure who had packed the gag in along with the rest of his usual kit, and had just been fiddling meaningfully with it and Sasuke’s favourite dildo when he realized that his brother’s desperate, guilty gaze was fixed on the ball gag. Then he couldn’t bear not to use it.

The choked gurgle Sasuke had let out, when Itachi forced the ball into his mouth… The way Sasuke sounded when he swallowed and sobbed around it… Itachi knew, now, that he was going to add a gag to the list of things he always wanted to have on hand when teaching Sasuke a lesson.

“Will you be good if I take this out?” Knowing that it rested against Sasuke’s tongue, that the ball and the straps had been soaked in Sasuke’s spit, lent a weight to every time Itachi ran his fingers over the hardware. “Will I have to seal your throat to keep you quiet?”

Sasuke gulped. Slowly, he shook his head; it appeared that he’d been a little shocked by how casually Itachi had sealed away his ability to speak last night, or, more correctly, sealed away his wordless screams so only Itachi would ever be able to hear them.

(Sasuke was surprisingly unrestrained when he deeply believed he wouldn’t be heard. Another thing to further experiment with.)

Sasuke whimpered as the gag came off, drooling helplessly all over himself. It was all too easy to give into the urge to fill his mouth with cock, and the fact that he was still tied down, still spread-eagled and helpless, only made it better. “Nnhh…”

“Just take it,” Itachi murmured. “You can eat all you need after you’ve swallowed niisan’s come, okay?”

“Nnh—no—hhn—” The drug cocktail Sasuke had been on all this time was a very gentle, precisely tailored mix; a stamina enhancer, a long-lasting aphrodisiac and a mild, but enduring muscle relaxant formed the primary core of the mix, with a few other things thrown in to boost their efficacy. Itachi had only been on something like this a handful of times, but he’d always known that if he ever chose to take Sasuke by force, this was what he’d use to gain an edge. “Nhhgh!”

The problem, as always, was the fact that seeing Sasuke made helpless in this particular way meant that Itachi found it extremely difficult to hold back. “Swallow it,” he found himself saying, hoarsely, even though he’d meant to make Sasuke’s sloppy, mostly involuntary blowjob last. “Swallow it, unless you want niisan to keep using your greedy little mouth.”

Wincing, Sasuke swallowed, gulping everything down, his cheeks hollowing from the frantic effort he was putting in. When Itachi pulled out, still more than halfway hard, Sasuke gave him a beseeching look that almost made him drive right back in.

Slowly, Itachi shifted his weight off his brother’s prone, bound body. He walked back to the table where he’d laid the dishes, putting together a quick plate of Sasuke’s favourites. When he took it over, he didn’t let Sasuke do a single thing for himself; he was the one to loosen Sasuke’s chains just enough that he could sit up, and he was the one to feed Sasuke each bite.

Sasuke, earlier on, had smirked at this obvious coddling, and accepted Itachi’s attention with the arrogance of a lord receiving their due. Now, he avoided Itachi’s gaze and tried to eat quickly, and he curled in on himself when his sticky, flaccid cock began to stir again on its own.

By now, he knew what to expect when that happened. He knew not to resist the way Itachi stroked him, even as Itachi continued feeding him. He trembled in anticipation when Itachi finally set the plate to one side and pushed him flat on his back again, already parting his tense, flexing thighs.

There was something deeply satisfying to Itachi about fingering Sasuke’s slick, loose hole and knowing that it had been made that way by him. That for a while, it was all just for Itachi alone to enjoy, to stretch and fill and fill and fill again until he didn’t have anything left.

“I’ll give you a break tonight after this, okay?” Itachi whispered. “You’ve been so good for me.”

“Nhnn… really?”

“Really,” Itachi said. It wasn’t a lie, he told himself; he did want to give his brother a break. It was just that he might change his mind later on, after fucking Sasuke’s ass full of his come. He’d changed his mind last night, after all, unable to resist the lure of thrusting right back into that well-used, dripping hole.

* * *

On day five, Itachi finally gave in to Sasuke’s anguished pleas and held off on giving him a final dose of that insidious drug cocktail. In return, Sasuke pledged to be perfectly obedient to Itachi’s commands for the last two days of their stay.

Naturally, he didn’t keep to that pledge. But by then, Itachi was having too much fun punishing him to bother drugging him up again. The fact that their holiday ended up being cut short soon after that due to a diplomatic emergency was disappointing, but Itachi decided to take it in stride. He’d learned two very useful things about Sasuke this time. He couldn’t wait to put them into practice at home.

* * *

Unhappily, the next time Itachi was blessed with several weeks of downtime while Sasuke was in the village, Itachi was recuperating from an intensive lung operation. He spent his free time either confined to bed or staggering through his rehabilitation exercises under the gimlet eye of two nurses that seemed to carry an unending amount of suspicion for how well he was taking the whole thing.

It would have been annoying if they weren’t the only ones treading on eggshells around him these days. Even Yuri was, though her version of it looked a lot like heartlessness instead, her daily, then every-other-day visits to his hospital room inevitably accompanied by verbal reports on clan business and a hefty batch of clan paperwork.

“It’s like everyone’s trying to take advantage of the time when I’m still drugged,” Itachi said, wryly, the second time Yuri brought along some of the never-ending paperwork, only for her to narrow her eyes and begin to examine the property purchase application she’d just fished out of the pile as if it were key evidence in one of her cases. “Yuri, really, I was joking.”

“Your father didn’t have to deal with this kind of volume,” she muttered. “Trust me, I checked.”

“Anyone in my position would be dealing with an increase,” Itachi said, his thin voice as soothing as he could make it. “They all just want to know what kind of bar I’ll set, initially.”

“They shouldn’t be bothering you when you’re—”

“Yuri, I’ve read everything else in my backlog,” Itachi said, interrupting her. “I’m _bored_. This is at least something different to read.” So convinced, every time Yuri visited him after that, she faithfully brought him a new stack of things to look over, and she never once said anything about the fact that what he did after skimming them was amuse himself by trying to stamp the ones he approved from an increasing distance.

“Are you even supposed to be using chakra strings?” Sasuke demanded, the first time he saw Itachi at ‘work’. “Stop that. Stop that right now.”

Sasuke was perhaps his most consistent, most annoying visitor, not because he took any relish in being able to fuss over Itachi and boss him around, but because he did so with utter, irresistible seriousness. The one time Itachi overdid it a little during rehabilitation and ended up flat on his back for two days, Sasuke had wept at his bedside, his quiet, strangled sobs a knife in Itachi’s stuffy chest. “You can’t do this,” Sasuke had whispered. “You can’t do this to me.”

Then, when Itachi cleared his throat, desperate to put an end to his brother’s tears, Sasuke glared at him, his teary gaze no less fierce than usual. “You’re not allowed to strain yourself again,” he said, flatly. “Understand?”

Itachi had been unable to do anything other than nod. The excuses he’d prepared, the assurances that he had only been a little impatient at the wrong moment, and that he wasn’t _really_ pushing himself, all of those went unsaid. Sasuke had wiped his eyes and cheeks and busied himself by changing or refreshing the flowers in the room, and Itachi had grudgingly adopted a slower, safer pace in rehabilitation afterwards.

* * *

By the time Itachi was allowed to limp home, he was more than ready for it, even though he doubted it would change anything about the way he was being coddled and supervised. Sasuke was the one to walk him home, fussing wordlessly every time Itachi so much as swayed or looked like he might stumble. It wasn’t until they were greeted at the gate to the Uchiha district that Itachi noticed something was off.

“Itachi-sama, Sasuke-san, good afternoon,” was the usual polite greeting. But the way his clansmen said it had changed. ‘Sasuke-san’ was no longer added simply to be polite. ‘Sasuke-san’ was being _addressed_ , the same way as Itachi was. Appeased, as if Sasuke was the kind of person that cared about being greeted that respectfully.

That Sasuke didn’t seem all that surprised by the treatment gave Itachi cause to worry. “What happened?” Itachi couldn’t help but ask, the moment they were on his front porch, and thus within the barrier seals that kept quiet conversations from being overheard. “The way they greeted you back there…”

“It’s nothing,” Sasuke insisted, as he moved ahead to fling open the front door. “Just a minor issue. I handled it.”

“What happened?”

“A minor issue.” Sasuke’s face was an unyielding wall. “You didn’t eat yet, right? I’ll warm something up.”

Later that night, as Itachi wheezed his way up to the main bedroom after helping put Akina to sleep, he seized the chance afforded him by Yuri’s steady shoulder and worried, doting looks. “I heard… Sasuke was involved in something… while I was in the hospital,” Itachi muttered, hating the way he had to parcel out the words between deep breaths. “A dispute? What…?”

“He didn’t tell you?” Yuri said, sounding completely unsurprised. “That little idiot.”

“He… said, minor. Wasn’t it?”

“Akio-kun decided the day after your surgery was the right time to raise a challenge to your fitness as clan head,” Yuri said, as she shouldered open the bedroom door for him. Then, when Itachi didn’t immediately follow her in, she doubled back to sling her arm around his waist. “Come on, it already happened. There’s no point getting angry now.”

As if that would stop him. Itachi knew Akio, knew how desperate he was to rise higher in the clan’s esteem, since that was the only way he’d rise in his strict, ambitious parents’ esteem as well. But for all that Akio yearned to see Itachi taken down a peg, he’d never dared to be anything less than friendly and deferential while in Itachi’s line of sight. Hearing that he had made trouble, had been _incited_ to stir anything up during the moments after Itachi’s surgery, when there had been a serious concern that his body might reject the treatment…

“Your father stood up first, to refute it, but Sasuke was the one to accept the duel,” Yuri continued, her warm, teasing tone almost enough to cover for the way her arm had tightened around his waist. “I almost felt sorry for Akio.”

“Sasuke won, then.”

“Sasuke nearly took his eyes,” Yuri said, her gentle voice now carrying an undertone of vicious satisfaction. “Oh, it was _so_ dramatic. Let me think, what did he say again… ah! It was something like, ‘you want a return to the old ways? I can arrange that, just for you’.”

Itachi flushed. He knew no one in the clan would have taken that kind of threat as anything other than Sasuke being properly loyal to his older brother, but. The way Yuri was grinning at him as she recounted the whole affair made him feel horribly self-conscious, and quite certain there had been another cast to things for anyone who knew about him and Sasuke’s secret relationship.

“And what else, oh, yes, he said: ‘don’t even think about snatching the headship if all you can do is get stepped on by me’.”

“He didn’t.”

“He _did_! He even had his foot on Akio’s neck! I almost swooned.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Itachi muttered, but he went on leaning on her as they approached the bed. Sitting down was a relief. “Do you… could you show me?”

Yuri sniggered. “You’ll swoon too,” she said, brightly, her hands already twisting through the seals for a full immersion genjutsu. “Here you go.”

It took a minute to orient himself after being thrust into the packed clan hall with nearly no warning. By the time he’d found a way to push his false body through the crowd, the argument between Akio and Yuri was already reaching a fever pitch. Akio, seeing the crowd’s lukewarm reaction to his accusations of favouritism, changed tack, shifting the topic in a direction Yuri could not properly refute him for.

“It’s shameful,” Akio said, loudly. “That you’re here on his behalf not because he was struck down in battle, but because he succumbed to a mere ailment.”

“Half of our adult ninja ‘succumb’ to some form of lung disease at some point in their career,” was Yuri’s sharp response. “Are they also unfit? Would you call it shameful that they, too need help coping with the consequences of our clan’s rightful reverence for the flame?”

“Oh, nice one,” Itachi murmured. It _was_ proven that extensive practice of any jutsu that required expelling chakra from the lungs resulted in extra strain and a higher susceptibility to lung disease. A fair amount of ninja with a speciality in ninjutsu ended up with strained lungs; the fact that more Uchiha did was only a factor of their ninja being more likely to specialize in ninjutsu. It wasn’t anything to be proud of, but Yuri made a rallying point of it anyway, all while sidestepping the main issue.

Itachi could see the exact moment when Akio grew desperate enough to lay aside his common sense and go for an all-out attack; he straightened, his expression hardening as he looked across at Yuri’s gentle, smiling, unmoved face.

She hadn’t stopped pressing home her advantage, all this while. “—operation is routine. The only reason my husband sought to undergo it this early was to make certain that he could not falter in his duty to the clan, not by even the smallest margin. That you and your branch could not wait two days for him to recover, for there to be the chance that he could hear your concerns in person—”

“Do you really think this is about a land dispute?” Akio said, his voice louder than it needed to be, his posture firming now that he’d committed to his stupidity. “This is about strength. If the clan head was as devoted as you say, as serious about his duty to us, he would be here, regardless of his injuries.”

Yuri stiffened. Even in a less traditional clan, that would be the sticking point. The fact that Itachi had been heavily sedated at the time would bear no weight in the face of someone accusing him of being so uncertain of his ability to control the clan that he was afraid to appear before his clan members in a weakened state, lest his rivals take the chance to strike him down. “So, Akio-kun,” Yuri said, “you want to make this about strength?”

Ah. That was why Sasuke had stepped in. As soon as Yuri’s voice took on that too-calm tone, some of the crowd began looking at the clueless Akio-kun with pity in their eyes. That Yuri had chosen to devote herself to the police force did nothing to dampen her killing instinct or her skills, and the only person that seemed unaware of that was the moron angling to fight her.

Akio-kun’s father looked like he had swallowed something bitter; his mother was staring at Yuri with helpless hatred in her eyes. Probably, if Yuri had done as her mild smile was signalling and killed Akio, his mother would have been the one to leap up to demand another duel, claiming blood-debt and crying injustice at the top of her lungs.

“I challenge the branch of the clan head,” Akio said, proudly. “I call him and his to account; I demand they answer strength with greater strength, or declare themselves unfit to rule our clan.”

Father, who had been seated calmly (if only on the surface) behind Yuri all this time, chose that moment to rise to his feet. But, as Yuri had said earlier, his voice was not the first to call out, to claim the dubious honour of response.

“This one answers,” Sasuke said, coolly, his perfunctory response no less a goad than the casual way he strolled into view, ignoring the Father’s sharp, restraining look and Yuri’s clear surprise. “Well? Get on with it.”

There was nothing casual about the fight. Itachi didn’t spar often with Sasuke these days, but even so, there was no way he could miss how little Sasuke held back. How desperate Akio became, within what seemed like minutes of their engagement.

Sasuke’s style had always been different from Itachi’s, less precise, more brutal. For all that his former team had had a Yamanaka on it, it had been one intended for the front lines, for the thick of combat. Itachi had rarely ever had his inner balance waver during a fight; Sasuke, on the other hand, had always struggled to hold on to clear-headedness. Only now, decades beyond he first began to learn how to fight, could he appear at ease in nearly any fight.

It was a brutal ease, even so. Itachi flinched at the first crack of breaking bone, but he wasn’t surprised. After the second—one arm, one leg—Akio staggered, falling to one knee.

“You want to die on your knees?” Sasuke said, his voice barely breathless, his tone about as goading as it could possibly be. “Some challenger you are.”

Akio, incensed, charged up and went at him with a roar. His charge ended with another sickening crack, and a heavy blow to his chest that made the crowd around them wince in sympathy.

“Weren’t you just saying a fucked up lung was nothing?” Sasuke snarled. “Come on. Show me. Show me how you’re better than niisan.”

The only reason Akio kept moving for the next few minutes was the fact that Sasuke had learned a thing or three from Sakura, and was not at all reluctant to mix his brutal blows and snap kicks with the occasional surge of healing chakra. Sakura was there, vibrating in her seat beside Mother, biting her lip in what looked like a bid to keep from calling out eager suggestions.

(Itachi couldn’t help but be thankful that the setting was tense and formal enough that Sakura was forced to hold back. The words ‘tear him apart’ and ‘c’mon, punch _through_ him’ had an entirely different flavour when you knew, as much of the clan did, that both the person yelling them and the person listening were quite capable of doing just that, bare-handed.)

If Akio had had any sense, the hit to his chest would have been the end of the fight for him. But instead, he kept on struggling, kept on choking and snarling and spitting garbled insults.

“You want the old ways back? You want strength to rule?” Sasuke was on top of Akio now, one hand tight around the other man’s neck, the other brushing Akio’s tangled hair off of his forehead. “You know, in the old days, challengers to the clan heads’ authority used to give up their eyes.”

Silence reigned around them, silence broken by Akio’s weak, laboured breaths.

“Look at me,” Sasuke said, his fingers tracing the seal he’d already left on Akio’s bloody temple. “You don’t think I’ll make you do it?”

“Sasuke-kun.” That was Yuri, her voice almost lazy. “Don’t go overboard.”

Hearing that, Sasuke let out a sigh. “This one hears,” he said, without looking away from the increasingly pale Akio. Then added: “You better pray niisan recovers. You do know I’m still next in line, right? If I take the headship, I’ll reinstate the old rule about challengers, just for you.”

He patted Akio’s cheek then, lightly. Akio flinched. Sasuke, smirking, rose to his feet, and Itachi, sensing what was coming next, moved again to keep his face in view.

Just as the shivering Akio began to try and shift away, Sasuke stopped him with a merciless foot on his shoulder, ignoring the stifled scream he let out. “Anyone else want to test their strength against me?” Sasuke looked around, turning in the opposite direction from where Itachi was standing. “Anyone?”

Itachi didn’t understand why no one would would meet his brother’s gaze for long until Sasuke turned back in his direction. _His eyes,_ Itachi thought, his breath caught in his throat. _They… they **evolved**._

More than that, there was madness lurking in Sasuke’s gaze, highlighted by his arrogant smirk, by the pulsing vein on his right temple. It was suddenly all too clear that Sasuke had not just stepped in because it was politic to keep Yuri from murdering a clan member unnecessarily, but because he had desperately needed to make someone else feel the kind of suffering he was enduring.

_If I die sooner than expected, he’ll be useless to the clan,_ Itachi thought, dazedly. _I need to figure out a better succession plan._ Somehow, the thought of taking on that new, annoying task didn’t faze him at all, didn’t make him feel any less—

“—becoming clan head if the best your strength can do is let you get stepped on by me,” Sasuke was saying, his eyes back to their normal brown, the madness mostly hidden now. “Next time, I won’t do anything so nice as worrying about a challenger’s health. I’ll kill them, and give their eyes to someone more deserving.”

“Sasuke.”

“What?” Only then did Sasuke lift his foot off the neck of the unconscious Akio. “The eyes of anyone who dies in rightful challenge belong to the winner, right? I know that hasn’t changed.”

“In that case, they would belong to the clan,” Yuri said, exasperation clear in her tone. “And don’t say that means it’d fall to you anyway; you’re the heir, but you’re not interim head.”

“My apologies, Yuri-sama,” Sasuke said, bowing sarcastically low. “This one overstepped.”

For answer, she stepped up and smacked the back of his head, and he mock-scowled at her, and that was when the genjutsu began to waver, the lively scene fading into the familiar confines of Itachi and Yuri’s bedroom.

“Well?” Yuri said, grinning slyly. “Delicious, right?”

Itachi groaned, covering his flushing face with one hand. “I’m going to have to pick a proper heir,” he grumbled. “He’s crazy. The clan would rebel within a month.”

(Neither of them mentioned the way his hand was shaking, or the fact that Sasuke’s long delayed Mangekyo had chosen now of all times to make its appearance.)

“Well at least you have a month or two of light duty left,” Yuri said, smirking. “You’ve all the time in the world to make a better choice.”

* * *

Itachi couldn’t help but take his rehabilitation a bit more seriously after that. It helped that seeing him improve in careful, cautious increments seemed to ease Sasuke’s unspoken tension. Sex was a thing of the past, but Sasuke slept pressed by Itachi’s side every night that he was in the village, and that eased the urge somewhat.

Inevitably, though, Itachi could bear the drought no longer. One morning, as Yuri stumbled downstairs to start breakfast, Itachi seized that slim chance, turning over to face his bleary-eyed brother.

Two kisses later, Sasuke was panting raggedly into his mouth, moaning in the back of his throat as Itachi’s hand worked slowly up and down his cock. “Wait,” Sasuke gasped. “Is this even—should I be doing—”

“Shut up,” Itachi said, following his words with a small, safe jolt of lightning chakra. “I know my limits, otouto. Spread yourself open for me.”

Shivering, Sasuke turned over, eager to obey. It was annoying, not being sure that he could hold Sasuke down, but the sight he made on his side, his back arched, the sunlight smoothing away his scars as he angled his leg up and reached back to spread apart his tight, firm ass cheeks was simply delectable.

He was much tighter than Itachi had expected. “You… you waited?”

Sasuke flinched. “I didn’t plan to,” he muttered. “Kiba’s still in Ame, you know, and Naruto and Sai were really busy too. It just—hngh—it worked out that way, that’s all.”

For that obvious lie, Itachi leaned in close and bit him at the juncture of his neck and his shoulder, relishing his choked cry. “If it’s like that, I guess I have to go slow.”

“Niisan, don’t… ngh, there’s no _time_ , you can’t— _ah_!”

“So fast,” Itachi said, his voice unsteady. He couldn’t believe it’d taken so little to make Sasuke drench his hand with come. “Don’t tell me you didn’t even touch yourself, otouto. You know how unhealthy that is.”

“I—hnn—it’s not that I d-didn’t, it’s just… it’s, with you, it’s so good…” Sasuke was almost unintelligible now, moving back against the press of Itachi’s fingers, his breaths coming hard and fast. “Touch me more, niisan. Touch me.”

Itachi, breathless, added another finger. He didn’t dare enter Sasuke now. He wanted—he knew, just knew he’d fail to set the kind of pace he craved, and that failure would only make Sasuke worry, when all he wanted to do was bind Sasuke in his arms and hear him come again and again and again.

“Niisan, I want your cock,” Sasuke whimpered. “Can you? Is it okay?”

“Help me a bit,” Itachi said, his resolution to settle things with just his fingers already crumbling. “You’ll need to fuck yourself on me. Will that be enough?”

“Yh—hgh—yes—” Gods, he was tight. He moaned, rocking back, forcing himself up and down Itachi’s aching cock, his hole tight enough that he had to be hurting.

Itachi, shuddering from the effort it took to hold back from coming prematurely, did his best to work his way in slowly. Sasuke’s pained, needy gasps further tested his control.

“Ungh!” Now, he was all the way in. Sasuke, rather than cooperating the way he’d promised, simply lay there writhing in front of him, tightening his slick ass around Itachi’s cock. The best Itachi could manage was short, deep thrusts; thankfully, that seemed enough for Sasuke.

Difficult as Itachi was finding it to hit the right spot, it already felt like Sasuke was close again. His upper body was trembling, and his ragged breaths ended in brief, wordless moans. “Niisan,” he sobbed, “fill me, niisan…”

And then he was tightening down, his head thrown back, his cock spurting another wave of slick warmth all over Itachi’s hand. Itachi closed his eyes and let go, gasping, savouring the feeling of being milked so hard by his brother’s hungry hole.

Neither of them could move, afterwards. It took Yuri knocking aggressively on the bedroom door for Sasuke to get into gear, pulling himself forward out of Itachi’s weakened grasp. “Don’t get up,” Sasuke murmured. “I’ll get your breakfast.”

“Wait,” Itachi said, still a little breathless. “You… you need to take better care of yourself.”

He didn’t know what else he could say. Didn’t want to be so bold as to hint that, in the event of his demise, Sasuke absolutely had to live on and live on well, one way or another.

But from the stubborn way Sasuke was looking down at him, it was all too obvious that anything he said in that line would be in vain. “I could say the same thing to you, niisan,” he said, pointedly, and bent in to kiss Itachi’s wrinkling forehead. “Rest, okay? I’ll be back up in a minute.”

Itachi, annoyed by the fact that Sasuke could so easily turn that vague suggestion back on him, pushed himself up into a sitting position. He was quite sure _he_ hadn’t had similar episodes of near-insanity when Sasuke had been ill or injured. That he loved Sasuke should have been obvious; that he loved Sasuke to the point that life would lose its lustre without Sasuke in it was something he’d been careful to keep under wraps.

Sighing, Itachi unsealed a cotton cloth and began wiping himself down. Sweet as it was to find out that he was as desperately loved by Sasuke as he’d always yearned to be, he couldn’t help but worry. He knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything about this new, bewildering state of affairs immediately, but the least he could do was try to think up a solution.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't the end, but the end is close. See you again in maybe a week? :D?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the end, Itachi gave up on the thought of making Sasuke less dependent on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that in this universe, Himawari gets born something like 10 years after Boruto because reasons. Other than that, please enjoy :D

In the end, Itachi gave up on the thought of making Sasuke less dependent on him. Too many things interfered, draining his free time enough that every moment he could spend by Sasuke’s side seemed too precious to waste.

Sasuke didn’t have any more children, but it wasn’t like Sarada, Mori and Reina became less of a handful as they grew up. More to the point, two years into Akina’s reign of terror at the Academy, Yuri started gaining weight and retching at the smell of fried food again, and though she sighed and made an appointment for a termination as usual, she ended up coming back from that appointment looking a little shell-shocked.

“It’s viable,” was all she would say, after a long, awkwardly silent dinner. Thankfully, Akina was still sulking over their refusal to allow her to graduate early this year, so she had been too wrapped up in her personal tragedy to notice what was wrong. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Jirou will remain the heir no matter what,” Itachi said, soothingly. “If you don’t feel up to it—”

“I want to, I just don’t know… I don’t know how Takehiko will take it.”

“Takehiko-kun will be happy with whatever choice you make,” Itachi said, flatly, and was gratified when that made Yuri roll her eyes at him and relax. “Really. It’ll be fine.”

Naturally, Itachi’s first blood-related child turned out to be a boy. The news that Itachi would nevertheless _not_ name Kenji as his heir reverberated through the clan like nothing else, making waves in the way the transfer of the heirship to Jirou hadn’t done.

Jirou, for all that he appeared to be taking the news quite calmly in public, made a pilgrimage to Yuri’s hospital room to perform a dogeza in private. “This one is unworthy,” he wept. “This one doubted your commitment to this unworthy servant, Yuri-sama, Itachi-sama.”

Uchiha Jirou, a semi-distant cousin with an exemplary record as a jonin, had been Itachi’s only real choice as successor. Jirou, child to a civilian woman and an overbearingly proud shinobi father, had been calmly blazing his own trail over the last decade and a half. Six years younger than Sasuke’s generation, he’d ignored his father’s insistence on pursuing the standard path from genin to chunin and then onto the force, clinging fiercely to his dream to become a medic-nin worthy of apprenticeship to Tsunade-sama and those who followed her battle-ready path.

That he’d accomplished what he’d always dreamed of, all while maintaining good relationships with those of his peer group, Uchiha and clanless and otherwise, spoke well of him. If Itachi had anything to say about it, adaptable, driven, yet personable ninja like Uchiha Jirou would eventually become the face of their clan to the outside world.

All that said, the boy wasn’t lacking in certain… quirks. His unflappable public persona was precisely the opposite in private; it was as if he let off steam by overreacting to everything around people he felt safe to do that with, before calming down and making an often well-reasoned, appropriate decision. The sharp contrast between Jirou’s public and private faces was sometimes quite funny, but was also, at times, extremely irritating.

Yuri, her expression sullen, was keeping the slumbering form of Kenji that way with a practised application of chakra. Her pointed glance at Itachi signalled that she did not believe herself to be in the hot seat this time, and that Jirou was Itachi’s problem to deal with.

Sighing internally, Itachi stepped in close to Jirou and gently, but firmly hauled him back to his feet. “You’ve nothing to apologize for, Jirou-kun,” he said, soothingly. “Look, how about we sit down for a bit…”

* * *

“If I were you, I’d do him,” Sasuke murmured, stretching where he lay. Sunlight dappled his short, messy black hair—he’d cut it shorter than usual this summer, complaining of the heat, only to turn around and sulk over its natural tendency to stick up in every direction even when weighed down with gel. “An hour or so of screaming ecstasy should work the nonsense right out of him.”

“The day I start fucking anyone for anything other than personal gratification again is the day I burn down this stupid village,” Itachi said, shifting the now all too familiar weight of Kenji against his chest. “Don’t look at me like that, he’s asleep.”

“Hn.” Sasuke’s smirk faded as he closed his eyes. “You did all right with Akina. I don’t know why you two are acting like he’s your first.”

“I haven’t slept more than four hours a night all month,” Itachi said, dully. Then, when Sasuke gave him the incredulous look that deserved: “Kenji doesn’t like shadow clones.”

“He’s a newborn. He doesn’t even know what a clone _is_.”

“I’m telling you, he knows. Yuri and I have tried everything.”

“Hiring a team?”

“He wouldn’t stop crying,” Itachi said, thinking ruefully of just how much he’d wanted to turn around and walk away when he came home that night to the ear-piercing sound of that familiar, thin wail. “Iruka as good as said our babysitting missions would be B-classed going forward.”

Sasuke, far from showing any sort of sympathy, simply opened his eyes and stared up at Itachi, as if his brother’s deliberately blank, miserable expression meant nothing to him. “Not taking him, sorry.”

“Sasuke…”

“Why are Sakura and I even your first choice?” Sasuke’s eyes were already drifting shut again. “Ask Mother.”

Sighing, Itachi lowered himself into the chair beside the one Sasuke was lounging in. “She has that cough again,” he said. “She’d take him, but…”

“It’s not like she can pass it on to him,” Sasuke muttered. Itachi really didn’t know what to feel, sometimes, about how casually Sasuke had taken Mother’s pointed refusal to slow down despite the fact that _her_ lung operation had not driven off her increasingly persistent cough. Itachi mostly dealt with the unfairness of having Sasuke’s attempts to lock him in his own bedroom whenever he caught a cold by pretending it didn’t happen. “Come on, you know she loves fussing over the kids.”

“She’s already dealing with whats’-his-name—Sho-something. You know, Izumi’s youngest. I don’t want to tire her.”

Sasuke let out a long, gusty sigh. “Alright, fine.”

“Otouto, I promise, I’ll make it—”

“Shut up. You’ll owe me two favours each time.”

“…fine.”

“First one, let’s see, you two will let Aki-chan graduate early.”

“Wh—! No!” Itachi had long since been able to whisper his outrage, all while keeping his body language completely relaxed. He just hadn’t ever thought it’d be used for quite this purpose. “Absolutely not!”

“Come on, you’ve subbed in for the jonin commander before, you have all kinds of disgusting pull with the mission desk, and you’ve got something on everyone in Konoha that remotely matters,” Sasuke drawled. “Drown her in D-ranks for a bit, step up her training until she wants to die, and in six months or so you’ll have her eating out of the palm of your hand.”

“What did she bribe you with?”

“She keeps showing up and bothering me and my team, niisan,” was the prosaic answer, one that made Itachi hang his head a bit even though he already knew perfectly well just how remorseless his daughter could be. “You know how those little brats are even without a distraction. I want her stopped.”

“You can’t seriously think suppressing her team is any kind of option,” Itachi said, bitterly. “What would be the point of letting her graduate early at all?”

“Well, I only said I’d try to have you consider it again,” Sasuke said, with an absent shrug. “So that’s one favour gone.”

“Aren’t you worried she’ll come complaining to you when it’s clear I haven’t changed my mind?” Itachi asked, frowning suspiciously. Then, seeing the way Sasuke looked back up at him, he couldn’t help but give way to a huff. “Oh, that’s rich. Taking the easy way out.”

“Someone has to teach her that things don’t always go her way,” Sasuke said, with a brief, sly lift of the side of his mouth, one that had Itachi bending in to press a kiss to it before he even knew what he was doing. “Mmm.”

“The second favour?” Itachi knew it would be risky to assume Kenji would stay out for long enough that he and Sasuke would be able to do anything, but he couldn’t help himself. He was already planning his next series of moves. Step one, make a clone to keep Sasuke occupied; step two, walk Kenji into the house and settle him into a crib with another clone watching over him. Step three would be the triumphant return, followed by a lavish half-hour or so with the two of them exploiting the fact that Sasuke’s back yard looked out on a densely wooded thicket that screened his back porch from view from all sides. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“Leave me a clone, niisan.”

“Done.” Itachi’s hands had already been moving through the seals. “And…?”

“Leave Kenji with the clone.” Sasuke’s breath was sinfully warm against his ear. “Come upstairs.”

“But—”

“I wasn’t asking you, niisan. Come.”

Somehow, Itachi wasn’t at all expecting that Sasuke’s first move after dragging him down onto their bed was to paralyse him with a quick jab of chakra to the side of his neck. “S—you—”

“Sleep,” Sasuke said, bluntly. “You need it. Yuri’s probably getting some right now because you brought Kenji with you. Don’t even think about arguing with me.”

Itachi couldn’t bring himself to struggle. In better condition, he would have seen and thwarted Sasuke’s move without even having to think about it, but right now… “K—Ken…”

“I’m here,” was the last thing he heard Sasuke say. “I’ll take care of him, niisan.”

Satisfied, Itachi gave into his drowsiness, letting sleep take it all away.

* * *

Itachi had his revenge something like a week later, after working out a convoluted babysitting arrangement with not just Sasuke and Sakura, but Hinata and Naruto as well. Apparently, enough Hyuuga kids turned out to be sensitive to chakra irregularities that teaching them to slowly get used to additional caretakers had a settled process.

That Hinata’s solution seemed to amount to dumping both Kenji and Himawari off in a crowded daycare run by, of all people, her cousin Neji, well, it made Itachi confused and uncomfortable for perhaps two minutes. Then, an hour or so later, as he and Yuri watched Kenji drooling amicably all over one of the daycare attendants, he felt a rush of giddy satisfaction.

It wasn’t just the fact that, with some focused practise, he and Yuri would probably be able to have their shadow clones replicate the same kind of chakra soothing exercise to calm Kenji down. It was the fact that there existed _an entire institution_ to do said exercises on their behalf when either or both of them were on mission, on call at work or exhausted from maintaining clones around the clock, or just in the mood for a well- or ill-deserved break.

“It’s expensive,” Itachi murmured, as he and Yuri watched, spellbound, as Kenji snuggled further into the arms of his attendant. “We’ll have to use it sparingly.”

Still, when Yuri went up to the front desk and paid without blinking for the centre to take on Kenji for the rest of the week, Itachi didn’t say anything against it. He was too busy slotting in the larger than usual expense into their budget, as well as calculating how much Yuri’s hasty trip down to see Takehiko would probably cost them in hotel stays.

And, of course, combing mentally through Sasuke’s schedule for the best time to ambush him. As it turned out, the only time that would work today was the hour or so after Sasuke’s team was done with D-ranks and was quietly cursing him under their breaths while they did their supplementary training.

So, while Yuri was dithering over which sets of handcuffs to take along with her, Itachi was packing up a hastily-made set of bento for him and Sasuke, all while his clones left Sakura an explanatory note (‘I’ll have him back to you after dinner’) and began tracking, teasing and menacing Sasuke for his sake.

(Itachi really didn’t like how often the help of his clones was necessary for pulling off this sort of impromptu meeting. The fact that their interference usually meant more time for him to fuck Sasuke’s well-prepared hole was the only thing that kept him open to using them.)

Thirty minutes later, Itachi paused before the door of a clan-restricted training room, his hands flashing through seals to temporarily take down the hasty, just a little too lethal assortment of barriers and traps on the entrance. Annoyed, he opened the door with a bit more force than was necessary, only to immediately come to a halt, transfixed by the sight before him.

Distracted as he was, Itachi didn’t fail to close the door behind him, or to re-engage the barriers and traps. He didn’t want anyone else seeing his brother like this.

Trapped. Dishevelled. Breathless, from the way his mostly bared chest was heaving. Arched, suspended between the hard, eager bodies of Itachi’s clones, his legs clamped tight around the waist of the clone fucking his ass, his hands tangled in the hem of the shirt of the clone taking his mouth, Sasuke was so far gone that Itachi doubted he’d have noticed half of Konoha trooping into the training room.

Without sound, the scene before Itachi took on a dreamlike, distant quality. The low light and the room’s lack of windows made it even more so, so that when Itachi stepped over the invisible line demarcated by the sound barrier that had been set up, Sasuke’s muffled groans seemed obscenely loud.

Technically, the clones were only doing as they had been told. The one with its cock in Sasuke’s mouth had been told to keep him quiet; the one with its cock in his ass had been supposed to get him ready down there. That Itachi had meant for them to simply gag and prepare his brother had been made perfectly clear; they’d just chosen to interpret his orders in a way that favoured their violent assault on Sasuke.

Angry as Itachi was, he couldn’t help but pay attention to the timbre of Sasuke’s moans, to the fact that Sasuke’s nipples were rock-hard, and the skin on his chest was flushed. Sasuke was so obviously enjoying himself that it would be cruel to put a premature end to it.

Caught out, Itachi’s clones had only stilled for a moment when they sensed his entry. Then they’d begun to move again, slowly, half of their attention on his approach, the other half on taking as much advantage of the situation as they could before they found out how he would react.

By the time Itachi was close enough to touch Sasuke’s bare skin, his clones had lowered his brother’s body to the floor, bearing down on Sasuke as they did so. One forced his thighs further apart; the other loomed over his upper body, driving deep into his throat, its goading gaze still fixed on Itachi as it did so.

“Hurry up and come in him,” Itachi said, hoarsely, even as he unbuttoned himself. “You’ve wasted enough of our time already.”

In the end, he didn’t dismiss them immediately. He liked the wide-eyed look Sasuke gave him when he simply joined in, and he dearly wanted to delay the usual rush of memory, the unsettlingly strong sense of ownership his clones all felt for Sasuke nowadays.

That they could help Itachi hold Sasuke down, keeping him spread and helpless without need of cuffs or ropes or certain jutsu was an undeniable plus. That they were clearly taking dark, shameless pleasure in having physically overwhelmed him was just as much of a minus. Itachi didn’t like seeing that expression on his own face, didn’t like the way it made him look.

He didn’t know what Sasuke saw in him, sometimes. He didn’t know how he would have been able to hold back all these years if Sasuke hadn’t turned out to enjoy being forced, being pounded until he screamed, being filled with come until his aching hole could no longer hold it all in.

Itachi didn’t know just when the switch happened, when the clone in Sasuke’s ass became just him enjoying that familiar tight, slick heat. There was still one more clone left, its focus mostly on twisting Sasuke’s nipples and keeping him trapped against its hard chest as Itachi drove into him harder.

The second dismissal hit hard. By then, Sasuke was too weak to do anything but whine when Itachi pulled out of his ass, overwhelmed by the urge to come inside his mouth one more time. Years ago, Sasuke would have needed to be coaxed to open up, coaxed to swallow down Itachi’s filthy cock, but now…

“Nghh!” Sasuke twitched beneath him, arching up to take in his cock. It was the work of a moment for Itachi to bend down too, to lick his way through the sticky traces Sasuke and his clones had left on Sasuke’s body. Sasuke was soft when Itachi sucked him in, but he didn’t stay that way. Soon, he was thrusting up into Itachi’s mouth, his dripping hole tightening around Itachi’s intruding fingers.

Choking, writhing, Sasuke came. He released only a small, weak spurt into Itachi’s mouth, and then he moaned as Itachi picked up the pace, the vibrations of his eager sounds adding yet another stimulant, yet another inducement to flood his mouth with come.

Itachi could hear himself by then, could hear the low, sordid grunts he let out as he used Sasuke’s wet, warm mouth. A memory from earlier in the night rose in him, unavoidable; he was unhappily sure his clone had sounded just like this. Like an animal.

He liked to believe he had more control, that he was different, but deep down, he knew he just hid it better. He knew he didn’t deserve this, didn’t deserve to have Sasuke open to him like this.

As always, Itachi didn’t let that guilty realization stop him. He groaned as he came, savouring every spurt he let out in Sasuke’s mouth. _I’m an animal, but I’m **his** ,_ he thought, fuzzily. _Surely, that’s all that counts._

Afterwards, when he’d finally withdrawn his cock, and Sasuke was giving him a wary, questioning scowl, Itachi couldn’t help but ask the old, old question: “Did you like it?”

That Sasuke rolled his eyes in response probably shouldn’t have made Itachi feel so relieved. “Next time,” he said, his haughty tone losing most of its weight when his voice was still so hoarse and unsteady, “I want more notice.”

“Yes,” Itachi murmured. “Definitely.”

* * *

### Epilogue

Years later, as Itachi watched his clansmen open up Mother’s grave in preparation to add Father’s elaborate, ash-filled urn, a sudden, irreverent thought struck him.

“Yuri,” he murmured, “this, when it’s our turn, how on earth do we even decide who goes with who?”

He wasn’t surprised to get a red-rimmed glare as his answer. He was even less surprised that both Sakura and Sasuke turned back to send him frosty looks, though the two of them were upset with him for different things; they’d recently been very eager to gang up on him with anyone else that was bearing a grudge against him.

(Sakura, because she’d felt personally insulted that Itachi had never let on about Father’s involvement with the Hokage despite knowing her insatiable appetite for in-clan gossip. Sasuke, because he’d felt personally insulted that Itachi had shrugged off the news of their parents having known about them after the initial shock.)

“Maa, it’s nothing difficult,” ANBU Hound’s cheerful monotone said, from somewhere ahead of them. “You and half your generation can all just go in the same hole.” Then, when the frigid glares of Sakura and Sasuke switched to the spot where he was standing, Hound added: “After all, that _is_ what the you’ve all been doing these last two decades. Right?”

“Not here,” Sasuke said, through gritted teeth, even as he tugged Sakura back to his side. “Remember what he does for a living. Everyone visits the hospital eventually.”

 _Ah,_ Itachi couldn’t help but think, as Hound’s now slightly wary signature drifted a deliberate step away, _that’s my brother._

Suddenly, it didn’t seem like that much of a hardship to think about what would happen after their deaths, not when things were like this. Life had yet to separate them, despite all Itachi’s fears. That death might do so seemed unimportant in the face of the fact that presently, they understood each other. And that he could say without a doubt that for years in the future, they would continue to be together in every way that really mattered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And THIS is now the end. Hopefully it satisfies you as much as it did me ;D 
> 
> I've enjoyed working on this story so much, and am really grateful for everyone who's cheered me along on the way. More Naruto filth is definitely incoming, just maybe not in this particular universe for the time being, so please look forward to it ~(￣▽￣)~*

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Case 54931: Atypical Results Stemming from Jutsu-induced Pregnancy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20483291) by [skaralding](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skaralding/pseuds/skaralding)
  * [Sai and Sasuke's Amateur Slut-off](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20483588) by [skaralding](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skaralding/pseuds/skaralding)




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